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Moorabool Pier Memorial Wall & Gardens

Location

The Esplanade. north end of Moorabool Street,, GEELONG VIC 3220 - Property No B6975

File Number

B6975

Level

Regional

Statement of Significance

The Moorabool Pier Memorial Wall, built in 1949 to the design of architects Leith and Bartlett, is of Regional social, historical and aesthetic heritage significance.
It is a rare, probably unique, example of a substantial structure built as a memorial to a port. It is also unusual for its mid twentieth-century date, and remains as a monument to the appreciation by the citizens of Geelong of the role of the port in their city's development. It is a unique recognition of the maritime operations which were seminal to Victoria's European history. The wall memorialises the coastal steamers which used the Moorabool Pier (built 1855), and particularly the pier's long, associaion with popular bay steamers such as the Edina and Courier.
The Wall includes a flagpole from the Moorabool Pier which was demolished in 1949, and contemporary styled concrete rendered lamp standards which complement similar examples at Eastern Beach and on Moorabool Street. The Wall was part of the contemporary movement to beaufify the Geelong foreshore, and expresses the confidence of the generation in the face of the constraints of the post-war period. The subsequent relocation of the statue of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) to the site, and more contemporary garden works, expressess the ongoing significance of the site to the City of Geelong.
Classified: 12/04/1999

Group