History
The first post office in Geelong was a corner of a store in Barwon Terrace, South Geelong, which opened around June 1840.
From August 1842 the Geelong Advertiser office was used as a post office.
A permanent post office was completed in 1857 on the corner of Ryrie and Gheringhap Streets. It was demolished in 1889 to make way for the building that stands on the site today. The new building was opened in 1891, with one major omission - the clock tower did not have a clock in it.
Work on providing a clock and chimes did not start until July 1911, with a London firm contracted to supply the timepiece. Five bells were provided, the largest one weighing 15 hundredweight (approximately 765 kilograms). Each clock face was 2.5 metres in size, the hour hands are 1 metre long, and the minute hands 1.25 metres long.
Read more about this topic: Geelong Post Office Building
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)
“All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)