Spotswood is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 7 km south-west of Melbourne's central business district. Its local government area is the City of Hobsons Bay. At the 2011 Census, Spotswood had a population of 2,339.
The suburb is bounded generally by the Geelong railway line in the west, the West Gate Freeway in the north, the Yarra River in the east and by the boundaries of the properties below Burleigh Street in the south.
Spotswood was named after J.S. Spottiswoode (shortened Spotswood), one of the first farmers who owned much of the area in the 1840s.
History
Spottiswoode Post Office opened on 1 February 1882 and was renamed Spottiswood around 1903 and Spotswood around 1906.
Locality
Spotswood is known for the Victorian Science Museum, known as Scienceworks. Scienceworks is near the old sewage pumping station of Spotswood, constructed in 1897. This location was also used as the police headquarters in Mad Max and for the Academy award winning short film Harvie Krumpet. The suburb is served by the Spotswood railway station.
Film
Spotswood was the setting of the eponymous Australian film, Spotswood, made in 1990-1991, released in 1992, starring Anthony Hopkins, Toni Collette, Bruno Lawrence and Russell Crowe, as a minor character. Most of the scenes in Spotswood were shot in the suburb, but the Moccasin factory is fictional and doesn't exist in Spotswood; the factory scenes in the movie were shot in the old sewage pumping station. Moccasins are a derogatory stereotype for the western suburbs of Melbourne; implying a lack of class, culture and sophistication even though they are commonly used elsewhere in Australia.
The suburb was the main location in the clay animation short-film Harvie Krumpet.