* Constructed between 1922 and 1930, Station Pier is of historic and scientific significance as the largest timber piled wharf structure in Australia.

* Station Pier is of historical significance because of its ability to provide a continuum, reflecting important phases of Melbourne's and Victoria's, economic, scientific, political, social and cultral development.

* Station Pier is historically and socially important through association with activities of the popular Bay Excursion vessels which were influential in the early of tourism in Victoria, and is able to demonstrate the importance of leisure activities and the passenger travel of Port Phillip Bay from the bayside piers. The now discontinued link with the suburban rail network is also of historic importance to this understanding, as also the axial and visual relationship with the gatehouse.

* Station Pier is socially and politically of historical importance because of its association with Australia's involvement in the Second World War, both as an embarkation and arrival point for Australian troops, and also an embarkation point for United States Troops.

* The pier also has had an important association with the post-war migration program of the Australian Government, which significantly transformed Victoria and Australian Society throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

* The pier is historically significant for economic reasons, having had a long association with the era of overseas shipping from 1930 to the 1970s, after which air traffic and containerisation transformed port activity.

* The terminal buildings are important and historically significant in demonstrating the alteration of port facilities within the pier's existence reflecting, by the changing sequence of architectura styles, the processes of passenger and cargo handling along with the evolution of overseas shipping practices and wharf engineering in Melbourne.

* The Stothert & Pitt cranes, erected in 1949, are intergral to the significance and understanding of the workings of Station Pier, and scientifically significant as essentially intact and rare examples of early portal cranes which can still be seen in the context of ocean going vessels.