Geelong
— — a working harbour that learned to walk slowly.
Not only on a wall.
“A bay city seventy-five kilometres south-west of Melbourne, where the Great Ocean Road begins its turn south. Eastern Beach holds the carousel and a hundred and four hand-painted bollards along the waterfront. The old bluestone wool stores have been turned over to galleries and small kitchens. The water in the inner harbour is shallow and warm and used.
Geelong, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Geelong sits on Corio Bay at the western edge of Port Phillip, about 75 kilometres south-west of Melbourne. The metropolitan population is around 280,000, making it Victoria's second-largest city. The waterfront runs from Cunningham Pier east to the Eastern Beach baths, a heritage promenade rebuilt in 1939. The city is the eastern gateway to the Great Ocean Road, which begins its 243-kilometre coastal arc at Torquay, twenty minutes south. Geelong's economy ran on wool for a century, and the bluestone wool stores along the harbour now house galleries, breweries, and the National Wool Museum.
Corio Bay is shallow and sheltered, an inner arm of Port Phillip protected from the Bass Strait swell by the Bellarine and Mornington peninsulas. The water in the inner harbour rarely shows whitecaps. The Eastern Beach baths still function as a tidal swimming enclosure first built in 1928. Cunningham Pier reaches about 200 metres out into the bay, dating to the 1850s and now restored as a restaurant and events space. Container traffic moves through the deepwater port at Corio Quay, but the inner harbour belongs to small boats and the foreshore walk.
Geelong is an hour by car or 65 minutes by V/Line train from Melbourne's Southern Cross Station. The Baywalk Bollards, 104 painted timber figures by sculptor Jan Mitchell installed between 1995 and 2002, line a stretch of waterfront from Limeburners Point to Rippleside Park. The Geelong Botanic Gardens sit above Eastern Beach and date to 1851. The city is the practical base for driving the Great Ocean Road. Most travellers stay one night and continue west toward Lorne and the Twelve Apostles the next morning.