Built in 1860, the unimposing Grosvenor Hotel was once part of a group of coaching inns on Brighton Road, which is deeply entrenched in the early settlement of Victoria, given there were coach stops along the first track to the Mornington Peninsula.

After being asked to leave The St Kilda Inn in 1985, Paul Elliott moved his band nights to The Grosvenor Hotel. Although just over the St Kilda border in Elwood, the gigs didn’t attract the same numbers as ‘The Helter Skelter Club’ did. Elliott also hosted a psychedelic night on Saturdays that he called ‘Velvet Fogg’ as well as the ‘Loco Beach Club’ on Wednesday nights organised by Rick Ferrara with $2 entry. There was also a night called ‘The Cadillac Club Presents’.

Despite The Grosvenor Hotel, or ‘Groveller’ as it was also called, not being right in the hub of St Kilda, many of Melbourne’s hardcore punk bands played gigs there including Venom P. Stinger, White Elephants, G.A.S.H, Depression, Extremes, Foot and Mouth, Vicious Circle, No Remorse, Renegade, End Result, The Wet Ones, Weddings Parties Anything, Alligator Parade, Charred Remains, Seminal Rats, A.I.D.S, Cosmic Psychos, Kaotics, Chaos, Permanent Damage, I Spit On Your Gravy, The SLUB, The Tribe, Fungus Brains, Willsmere, Tombstone Hands, Renegade, Boltcutters, Orchestra of Skin and Bone, and many more…

Click on the PDF below to read memories about The Duke of Edinburgh by people who were there...