The Prince of Wales Hotel — St Kilda, Melbourne

The Prince of Wales Hotel on Fitzroy Street in St Kilda was a central node of Melbourne's late-1970s and early-1980s music and bohemian scene, and one of the venues associated with Nick Cave, the Birthday Party, and the wider St Kilda community of musicians, artists, and writers. Fitzroy Street itself — running from Fitzroy Street station to Acland Street — was the main artery of a neighbourhood that combined cheap accommodation, heroin, and an intensity of creative activity that produced some of the most significant Australian music of the era.

The St Kilda of Cave's formative years was simultaneously glamorous and squalid — a seaside suburb that attracted everyone who didn't fit elsewhere, presided over by the Espy up on the Esplanade and a network of Fitzroy Street pubs and venues below. The Prince of Wales was part of this landscape, hosting bands and serving as a social space for the community around which the Birthday Party and their contemporaries moved. Cave's early literary sensibility — his attraction to violence, sexuality, and biblical language — was formed in part by this environment.

The Prince of Wales Hotel still operates on Fitzroy Street in St Kilda. The street has gentrified significantly but retains pockets of its original character. St Kilda remains one of Melbourne's most visited neighbourhoods and its musical heritage is celebrated in various walking guides and local histories.