Where to Stay in Geelong, State of Victoria

What is Geelong known for?

Its restored bayfront, lined with brightly painted bollards and an old carousel, looks out over the water toward Melbourne, and a wool museum recalls the days when the city was a capital of the wool trade. The coast road begins nearby. Bay and wool mark the city.

What are the main landmarks in Geelong?

The painted bollards line the waterfront of Geelong. Over a hundred timber figures, carved and brightly painted, stand along the bay promenade, the emblem of the city, above the beach. Museums fill the old wool stores.

The National Wool Museum tells the story of the trade, while the Geelong Art Gallery, the old carousel, and the art-deco Eastern Beach draw the crowds.

What is the history of Geelong?

Geelong grew as a wool port on the bay. Settlers founded the town in the eighteen-thirties on Corio Bay, and it boomed when the goldfields opened inland, becoming a busy port that shipped the wool of the western plains to the world. Wool built the city.

Great bluestone mills and stores rose along the water, and Geelong became one of the wool capitals of the land, its market setting prices across the world. Factories followed the wool. In the twentieth century the city turned to manufacturing, and a great car works and other plants made Geelong an industrial town beside its port.

In time the old trades faded. The mills and the car works closed, but the city turned its bayfront into a bright promenade of bollards, beaches, and cafés, and the wool stores became museums. The bay is the town's heart once more.

Geelong looks out over Corio Bay toward the coast.

Where is Geelong?

Geelong lies on Corio Bay in the south of Victoria. The city curves around the bay where the Barwon River meets the sea, on a plain of dry grassland southwest of Melbourne, near the wild coast of the south. Low hills rise behind the town.

The bay opens south to the ocean.

What is the climate of Geelong?

Geelong has a mild, temperate climate. Warm, dry summers bring the beach crowds, and the winters stay cool and wet off the Southern Ocean, with changeable weather all year. Sea winds sweep the bay in the afternoons.

The coast stays cool and breezy.

How do you get to Geelong?

Geelong lies southwest of Melbourne on the coast of Victoria. Trains and the freeway run to it from Melbourne across the plains, and the road goes on to the Great Ocean Road and the Bellarine coast. Buses reach the bay towns around.

Most arrive by road or rail from Melbourne.