page_title: Geelong
section_title: 1850s: Gold rush
hierarchical_section_title: Geelong / History / 1850s: Gold rush
context_page_description: Geelong is a port city located on Corio Bay and the Barwon River, in the state of Victoria, Australia. Geelong is 75 kilometres south-west of the state capital, Melbourne. It is the second largest Victorian city, with an estimated urban population of 268,277 as of June 2018. It is also Australia's second fastest growing city. Geelong runs 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. Geelong is the administrative centre for the City of Greater Geelong municipality, which covers urban, rural and coastal areas surrounding the city, including the Bellarine Peninsula.
  Geelong was named in 1827, with the name derived from the local Wathaurong Aboriginal name for the region, Djillong, thought to mean "land" or "cliffs" or "tongue of land or peninsula". Geelong City is also known as the 'Gateway City' due to its central location to surrounding Victorian regional centres like Ballarat in the north west, Torquay, Great Ocean Road and Warrnambool in the southwest, Hamilton, Colac and Winchelsea to the west, and the state capital of Melbourne in the north east.
context_section_description: 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 Town 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-to-Melbourne railway was built by the Geelong and 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 and 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 West Geelong 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.
caption: View of Geelong. 1856 oil painting by Eugene von Guérard.
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