Geelong (Victoria)
20-21 December 2025
I’ve said in an earlier blog that
I regret my initial misconceptions of Geelong. Mentally I had likened it to being
the Detroit of Victoria, an impoverished motor city whose highlights would include
Kardinia Park and the exit sign out.
Geelong, please forgive me. My prejudice
and bias was based on pathetic, imagined stereotypes and erroneous assessments
of a location that I really knew nothing about. You are a gem.
Originally we’d planned our
little escape to Geelong earlier in the year but various expenses got in the
way and what we’d planned for April quickly became, ‘another time’.
Surprisingly, that other time came in advance of our long planned trip to
Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, serving as the warm-up and travel
inspiration for what was to come.
The trigger and seed of inspiration
for our weekend away was the Renegades v. Heat match to be held at the GMHBA
stadium, aka, Kardinia Park.
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Beyond any of my wildest dreams,
my son has thankfully fallen in love with cricket. The ONLY other Elisher in a
European family to comprehend whatever it is that any of the other Europeans couldn’t.
The number of questions that I ‘fielded’ over the years of ‘who’s winning’, ‘who’s side is the bowler on’,
‘is that batsmen out now’, what does 2/65 mean. Why? Why was this ever so difficult.
I have a 6-yr old son that understands run-rates, strike rates, runs remaining.
He’s a legend!
Now the great thing about Geelong
is that it has a lot of Melbourne distilled into its very fabric. So if you
want to get a taste of Melbourne in a quick sound bite, then Geelong is too bad
a place to do just that. It has some really cool bars, great restaurants, and
an outlook onto the bay, supported by Cunningham Pier, Corio Bay foreshore
reserve, Eastern Beach and Easter Beach promenade. These are wonderful places
to enjoy all of what Geelong has to offer on the south-western corner of Port
Phillip Bay.
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There’s just something very relaxed
and almost ‘holiday-vibe’ like about Geelong. It’s not quite the holiday
destination, but you can see all the places that you want to go from here. It’s
acts as the gateway to the Great Ocean Road, but also the very underrated
Bellarine peninsula.
Geelong served as the perfect
warm-up to our EOY holiday – but – is a standout in its own right.
For anyone that wants to know,
the Renegades end-up losing the match, c’est la vie. Time with my son is more
than enough to make me feel good these days.
