This tropical tree attracted the rich and famous
The source of the name Palm Beach at the northern end of the peninsula is well known. Before European settlement, it was home to a substantial number of palm trees – Livistona australis, or cabbage tree palms. They still grow in Hordern Park and in some gullies at the southern end of the beach.
Palm trees require well-drained soils and warmish, relatively humid conditions without extreme winds. Parts of Palm Beach provided this, as did some other localities. Shelley Beach at the southern end of the Manly surf beach is located in Cabbage Tree Bay (now reflected in the name of the aquatic reserve).
It appears that it was ambitious real estate developers who christened Palm Beach. However their inspiration was not necessarily just the local flora. A probable giveaway is the name of one of the roads in the early 1912 subdivisions – Florida Road.
In the period 1900 to 1912, the lifestyles of those rich and famous Americans who had built summer houses in Palm Beach, Florida were often breathlessly reported in Australian newspapers. No doubt the developers of ‘our’ Palm Beach were hoping to bring some of that aura to the northern peninsula. They succeeded. Palm Beach did (and still does) attract the upper echelons of our society, albeit far less ostentatiously than is the case with their American cousins.
If the general public had understood how Palm Beach, Florida received its name they perhaps would not have been as easily impressed. In 1878, a ship heading for Spain from Cuba carrying 20,000 coconuts ran aground on the Florida coast. The locals planted the nuts hoping to create a source of income. Instead, they created a coastline that took on a distinctly tropical feel, one that real estate developers soon exploited.
