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:
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)