Geelong

Geelong should have been Victoria's capital. By 1851, the wool port was busier than Melbourne, serving as gateway to the Western District's sheep stations and soon the goldfields of central Victoria. But Melbourne ran a campaign dubbing Geelong 'the Sleepy Hollow' and allegedly circulated false maps showing Melbourne closer to the goldfields. The nickname stuck for nearly a century. By the time Ballarat and Bendigo's gold ran dry, Geelong had fallen permanently into Melbourne's shadow—Victoria's second city, but never its equal.

The Wadawurrung people called this land Djilang—meaning 'land,' 'cliffs,' or 'tongue of land'—for thousands of years before European squatters arrived in 1836. The township was surveyed three weeks after Melbourne and gazetted in 1838, already home to 545 people with a church, hotel, and wool stores. By 1841, the first wool was sailing for England. But the gold rushes that made Victoria rich bypassed Geelong; the diggers went to Ballarat and Bendigo, while Geelong's wool merchants watched the opportunity slip away.

Geelong reinvented itself through manufacturing. Victoria's first woollen mill opened at South Geelong in 1868. In 1925, the first Australian-assembled Model T Ford rolled off a 12-meter assembly line in a rented wool store. Ford's Geelong plant at Norlane employed generations of workers until Australian car manufacturing collapsed in the 2010s. When Ford ceased manufacturing and Alcoa closed Point Henry, the city's industrial era ended—but not before Deakin University had begun building something new.

Today Geelong is completing one of Australia's most successful post-industrial transformations. Deakin University, founded in 1977 with 14,000 local students by 2019, now contributes A$426 million annually to the regional economy. The Geelong Future Economy Precinct at Waurn Ponds focuses on advanced manufacturing, carbon fiber, and biotechnology. The A$103 million Australian Future Fibres Research and Innovation Centre opened in 2014. Healthcare and construction have eclipsed manufacturing as economic drivers, while the waterfront—once industrial wharves—has become a cultural and residential precinct.

By 2026, Geelong projects 500,000 residents by the end of the decade. The city that Melbourne dismissed as 'Sleepy Hollow' is now positioned as a 'clever and creative international city' with airport, port, university, and growing tech sector. The transformation required decades of state intervention—special grants, industry support, decentralization policies—but the result is a regional city that survived deindustrialization when many others didn't. Melbourne's shadow still falls, but Geelong has found its own light.