Geelong ( ; Wathawurrung: Djilang/Djalang) is a port city in Victoria, Australia, located at the western end of Corio Bay (the smaller western portion of Port Phillip Bay) and the left bank of Barwon River, about southwest of Melbourne. With an estimated population of 282,809 in 2023, Geelong is the second-largest city in the state of Victoria. It is the administrative centre for the City of Greater Geelong municipality, which is Port Phillip's only regional metropolitan area, and covers all the urban, rural, and coastal reserves around the city including the entire Bellarine Peninsula and from the plains of Lara in the north to the rolling hills of Waurn Ponds to the south, with Corio Bay to the east and the Barrabool Hills to the west.
The traditional owners of the land on which Geelong sits are the Wadawurrung (also known as Wathaurong) Aboriginal people of the Kulin nation. The modern name of Geelong, first recorded in 1827, was derived from the local Wadawurrung name for the region, Djilang, thought to mean "land", "cliffs", or "tongue of land or peninsula". The area was first surveyed by the European settlers in 1838, three weeks after Melbourne. During the 1850s Victorian gold rush, Geelong experienced a brief boom as the main port to the goldfields of central Victoria.Norman Houghton - The town then diversified into manufacturing, and during the 1860s became one of the largest manufacturing centres in Australia with its wool mills, ropeworks, and paper mills. During the city's early years, inhabitants of Geelong were often called Geelongites or Pivotonians, derived from the city's nickname of "The Pivot", referring to the city's role as a shipping and rail hub for Ballarat and the Western District.
Geelong was proclaimed a city in 1910, with industrial growth from this time until the 1960s establishing the city as a manufacturing centre for the state, and the population grew to over 100,000 by the mid-1960s. Population increases during the 21st century were largely due to growth in service industries, as the manufacturing sector has declined. Redevelopment of the inner city has occurred since the 1990s, as well as gentrification of inner suburbs, and the city has a population growth rate higher than the national average.
Geelong is an emerging healthcare, education, and advanced manufacturing centre. The city's economy is shifting quickly, and, despite experiencing the drawbacks of losing much of its heavy manufacturing, it is seeing much growth in other tertiary sectors, positioning itself as one of the leading non-capital Australian cities. It has become Australia's second fastest-growing city. Geelong is regarded as the "Gateway City" due to its critical location to surrounding western Victorian regional centres, providing a transport corridor for surrounding regions to the state capital Melbourne. It is also home to the Geelong Football Club, the second-oldest club in the Australian Football League.
History
Etymology The name Geelong comes from Djilang, used by the Wadawurrung traditional owners of the area at the time of settlement.
Early history and foundation
The area of Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula are the traditional lands of the Wadawurrung (Wathaurong) Indigenous Australian tribe. The first non-Indigenous person recorded as visiting the region was Lieutenant John Murray, who commanded the brig . After anchoring outside Port Phillip Heads (the narrow entrance to Port Phillip, onto which both Geelong and Melbourne now front), on 1 February 1802, he sent a small boat with six men to explore. Led by John Bowen, they explored the immediate area, returning to Lady Nelson on 4 February. On reporting favourable findings, Lady Nelson entered Port Phillip on 14 February, and did not leave until 12 March. During this time, Murray explored the Geelong area and, whilst on the far side of the bay, claimed the entire area for Britain. He named the bay Port King, after Philip Gidley King, then Governor of New South Wales. Governor King later renamed the bay Port Phillip after the first governor of New South Wales, Arthur Phillip. Arriving not long after Murray was Matthew Flinders, who entered Port Phillip on 27 April 1802. He charted the entire bay, including the Geelong area, believing he was the first to sight the huge expanse of water, but in a rush to reach Sydney before winter set in, he left Port Phillip on 3 May.
In January 1803, Surveyor-General Charles Grimes arrived at Port Phillip in the sloop and mapped the area, including the future site of Geelong, but reported the area was unfavourable for settlement and returned to Sydney on 27 February. In October of the same year, led by Lieutenant Colonel David Collins arrived in the bay to establish the Sullivan Bay penal colony. Collins was dissatisfied with the area chosen, and sent a small party led by First Lieutenant J.H. Tuckey to investigate alternative sites. The party spent 22 to 27 October on the north shore of Corio Bay, where the first Aboriginal death at the hands of a European in Victoria occurred.
The next European visit to the area was by the explorers Hamilton Hume and William Hovell. They reached the northern edge of Corio Bay – the area of Port Phillip that Geelong now fronts – on 16 December 1824, and it was at this time they reported that the Aboriginals called the area Corayo, the bay being called Djillong. Hume and Hovell had been contracted to travel overland from Sydney to Port Phillip, and having achieved this, they stayed the night and began their return journey two days later on 18 December.
The convict William Buckley escaped from the Sullivan Bay settlement in 1803, and lived among the Wadawurrung people for 32 years on the Bellarine Peninsula. In 1835, John Batman used Indented Head as his base camp, leaving behind several employees whilst he returned to Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land) for more supplies and his family. In this same year, Buckley surrendered to the party led by John Helder Wedge and was later pardoned by Lieutenant-Governor Sir George Arthur, and subsequently given the position of interpreter to the natives.
In March 1836, three squatters, David Fisher, James Strachan, and George Russell, arrived on Caledonia and settled the area. Geelong was first surveyed by Assistant Surveyor W. H. Smythe three weeks after Melbourne, and was gazetted as a town on 10 October 1838. There was already a church, hotel, store, wool store, and 82 houses, and the town population was 545. By 1841, the first wool had been sent to England and a regular steamer service was running between Geelong and Melbourne. Captain Foster Fyans was commissioned as the local Police Magistrate in 1837 and established himself on the Barwon River at the site of the area of present-day Fyansford. Fyans arranged the first muster of the Indigenous population and 275 Aboriginal people were found to be living in the area. Fyans distributed blankets, sugar, and flour to these people but soon ordered his soldiers to "click their triggers" at them when a lack of blankets caused anger. Fyans constructed a breakwater to improve the water supply to the city by preventing the salty lower reaches from mixing with fresh water and pooling water. In 1839, Charles Sievwright, the newly appointed Assistant Protector of Aborigines (for the western district) sets up camp on the Barwon River near Fyans ford.
The Geelong Keys were discovered around 1845 by Governor Charles La Trobe on Corio Bay. They were embedded in the stone in such a way that he believed that they had been there for 100–150 years, possibly dropped by Portuguese explorers. In 1849, Fyans was nominated as the inaugural Mayor of the Geelong Town Council and renowned fly fishing author Alfred Ronalds engraved the town seal. An early settler of Geelong, Alexander Thomson, for which the area of Thomson in Geelong East is named, settled on the Barwon River, and was Mayor of Geelong on five occasions from 1850 to 1858.
The population was 1,370 by 1848.
1850s: Gold rush
Gold was discovered in nearby Ballarat in 1851, causing the Geelong population to grow to 23,000 people by the mid-1850s. To counter this, a false map was issued by Melbourne interests to new arrivals, showing the quickest road to the goldfields as being via Melbourne. The first issue of the Geelong Advertiser newspaper was published in 1840 by James Harrison, who also built the world's first ether vapour compression cycle ice-making and refrigeration machine in 1844, later being commissioned by a brewery in 1856 to build a machine that cooled beer.
The Geelong Hospital was opened in 1852, and construction on the Geelong City Hall commenced in 1855. Development of the Port of Geelong began with the creation of the first shipping channel in Corio Bay in 1853. The Geelong–Melbourne railway was built by the Geelong & Melbourne Railway Company in 1857. Rabbits were introduced to Australia in 1859 by Thomas Austin, who imported them from England for hunting purposes at his Barwon Park property near Winchelsea. One of Geelong's best-known department stores, Bright & Hitchcocks, was established in 1861, and the HM Prison Geelong, built using convict labour, was opened in 1864.
In 1866, Graham Berry started a newspaper, the Geelong Register, as a rival to the established Geelong Advertiser. When this proved unsuccessful, he bought the Advertiser and made himself editor of the now-merged papers. Using the paper as a platform, he was elected for Geelong West in 1869. In 1877, he switched to Geelong, which he represented until 1886, and served as Victorian Premier in 1875, 1877–1880, and 1880–1881. On the Market Square in the middle of the city, a clock tower was erected in 1856, and an Exhibition Building was opened in 1879.
1860s: The 'Sleepy Hollow' The gold rush had seen Ballarat and Bendigo grow larger than Geelong in terms of population. Melbourne critics dubbed Geelong "Sleepy Hollow", a tag that recurred many times in the following years. A number of industries became established in Geelong, including Victoria's first woollen mill at South Geelong in 1868. In 1869, the clipper Lightning caught fire at the Yarra Street pier and was cast adrift in Corio Bay to burn, before being sunk by artillery fire. Improvements to transport saw Geelong emerge as the centre of the Western District of Victoria, with railway lines extended towards Colac in 1876, and to Queenscliff in 1879. Construction of the Hopetoun shipping channel began in 1881 and completed in 1893.
The Geelong Cup was first held in 1872, and Victoria's first long-distance telephone call was made from Geelong to Queenscliff on 8 January 1878, only one year after the invention of the device itself. Geelong was also the home of a prosperous wine industry until the emergence of the sap-sucking insect Phylloxera vastatrix at Fyansford in 1875, which led to the Victorian Government ordering the destruction of all vines in the Geelong area to prevent the spread of the pest, killing the industry until the 1960s. Between 1886 and 1889, the central business district's major banks and insurance companies erected new premises in a solid and ornate character. The existing Geelong Post Office was built during this time and the Gordon Technical College was established. Further industrial growth occurred, with the Fyansford cement works being established in 1890.
The town became referred to as "The Pivot" in the 1860s, owing to its being a rail and shipping hub for western Victoria.
1900s: A city develops