History
The Geelong and Western District Agricultural and Horticultural Society was formed in February 1855. Their first showgrounds site was in East Geelong, south of Eastern Park, and was bounded by Ryrie, Garden, Myers and Normanby Streets. The second showgrounds opened in October 1891, on a new site that ran south from Ormond Road to St Albans Road. A 40 metre long wooden grandstand was provided on this side.
In 1907 the showgrounds were again moved, this time to the new Geelong Racecourse. April 14, 1907, saw the grandstand transported from the old site by Messrs McCoy and Son. Weighing 100 tonnes, it was moved as a whole by a traction engine across the Queenscliff railway line after being placed onto 52 large rollers. The stand remained at the current racecourse until at least the early 1990s.
The agricultural society shared the Geelong Racecourse until 1954, when it moved to the current site.
Read more about this topic: Geelong Showgrounds
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.”
—Lytton Strachey (1880–1932)
“This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)