Innovative bollard art on Geelong's waterfront

                                                          

Sail Captains

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Geelong is Victoria’s second biggest city. The Financial Review (Feb 2014) wrote that the Ford Company was clos­ing its Geelong manufactur­ing works, ending many hundreds of jobs, as would Alcoa’s aluminium smelter at Point Henry closed costing 800 jobs. Shell’s refining-retailing business was sold, Qantas had already axed 300 maintenance jobs at Av­alon Airport and Target had sacked 260 from its Geelong head office. For a city that had only 253,000 citizens, this was disastrous. Manuf­act­uring was fading away.

Australian Jan Mitchell (1940–2008) was working overseas for 20 years as a grap­hic artist with the Irish Nat­ional Television Network when she decided to return. Jan first presented a carved bollard in Geel­ong, offering the concept of a waterfront bollard-walk in 1994.

Increased tourism had already become Geelong’s goal! Mitchell was soon commissioned by the City of Greater Gee­long in 1995 to transform reclaimed timber pylons from a previous­ly demolished city pier into remarkable works of art. She created her first bollard art as part of an artist-in-schools programme.

There are 104 bollards stretching along our waterfront that are made out of huge wooden pylons, many recovered from the Yar­ra St Pier which was destroyed by fire in the 1980s and later removed. The wood was first sculptured, then painstakingly hand painted. The bollards depict many of the events and history of the Geelong region, until today.

Research went into every detail of the bollards’ design: clothes, ar­te­facts, faces and highlights all about Geelong. They were produced in a huge warehouse in an old wool store on the waterfront, near Cun­ning­ham Pier. The programme ran from 1999.

It took 5 years of hard work to create the bollards along the water­front, although they can also be spotted welcoming visitors at Tullam­ar­ine Airport in Melbourne. The bollard sculpture walk is 4km long on a path from Rippleside Park in North Geelong en route to Eastern Beach Sea Baths. Today the Bollard Walk has 48 clusters spread over 4 ks, taking 2 hours walk one-way. The bollards stand nearly 2 m tall, from Lime­burn­ers Point in the east, the trail runs across Eastern Beach and Bot­anic Gardens, past the central waterfront precinct, then along Western Beach to Rippleside Park.

Early Geelong Foot­baller

uniform from c1890s

The groups of Mitchell’s bollards are all caricatures of un­ique local people or famous local jobs, from the original Indig­enous inhabit­ants to modern characters. They explored the key charact­ers who’ve shaped Geelong throughout his­tory, from English explorer Matthew Flinders on.

My personal favourites were Bathing Beauties where the beach front was the venue for beauty competitions from the 1930s and the Town Baths Swimmers Club, a line of lifesavers disp­l­aying the changing styles of men’s swimming trunks. The most end­ear­ing was the Early Geelong Foot­baller from a nearby field used for football prac­t­ice. And see a Koori family, celebrat­ing the nation’s aboriginal culture.

Volunteer Rifle Band

Trip Advisor

      

The Volunteer Rifle Band represents Geelong’s first band con­certs, which were held way back in 1861. They are pictured here playing The Geelong Polka, as the musical score shows. Another scene portrays Billy Coyte, a local from the Eastern Beach Life Savers, who taught generations of Geelong kids how to swim. And see the sail captain of the steamship S.S Edina, which oper­at­ed from the late C19th until the mid-20th century. The sail captain was bringing live birds ashore, going to Botanic Garden aviaries.

Many of the bollards are painted as historic people, including many of our founders and even former Premier Jeff Kennett and former Prime Min­ister of Australia John Howard, both in office when the bollards were being designed and installed. Favourites include explorer Mathew Flin­ders overlooking the bay he discovered in 1802, the hist­oric Geel­ong footballer near the old Hi-Lite Park site and the sailor and floozy near Cunningham Pier. Other tributes to historic moments in Geelong’s history include the Speed Trials bollards in Ritchie Boulevard, 1920’s lady swimmers on the sandy fore­shore nearby and various sea captains and the rustic fisherman at Fisherman’s Pier.

Life savers

Weekend Notes

 

I had no idea why rabbits were an occasional motif on the boll­ards, found squishing closely to a foot. Ten rabbit pairs were intro­d­uced for sport through the Port of Geelong in 1859 (see Bollard Shop), but ruining the natural ecology via the rabbit plague.

Jan was honoured in 2006 when she was awarded the Order of Aus­t­ralia for transforming the Geelong Waterfront. The Zonta Club of Geelong celebrates International Women's Day with the Women: a Celebration art exh­ibition, presented by Geelong artists using differ­ent media. The first prize is the Jan Mitchell Memorial Art Award.

The bollards have become an important and very well recognised icon of Geelong over recent years. Geelong’s tourist body installed 2 of them outside Melbourne’s International Airport to catch peop­le’s attention and prompt them into thinking about seeing Geelong.

Geelong Baths Swimming Club

Cunningham Pier in the background

Trip Advisor

Happily Mitchell produced the colourful and quirky bollards in 1994-9 but sadly died from cancer in 2008. To honour the late art­ist, a bollard portrait was made of her which acc­omp­anied a special commemorative exhibit of her work.