A great Wool Museum, Geelong.

Sheep arrived in Geelong in 1832, before it was proclaimed a town in 1838. When it was developing as a Victorian port, Australia was still a series of separate colonies which levied customs duties on goods coming from overseas and goods passing between colonies. For some years, all customs clearances had to be made through Williamstown, forcing ships trading with Geelong to travel north for customs before offloading the goods back in Geelong.

Merino sheep across Victoria produced wool that was soft, plentiful and appealing to Britain's mills. And so in the 1840s, wool became Geelong's most important industry. The raw product was transported into Geelong, processed there and exported from Geelong. Wool heading for the Australian colonies was taken to the port in loosely packed bales, but wool to be shipped to Britain was packed in solid bins.

National Wool Museum, Geelong

Victoria's Museums

Pioneer merchant James Ford Strachan constructed his first bonded store in 1840, the first stone building in newly colonised Geelong. Only when Geelong was declared a free port in 1848 was a proper Customs House needed near the Geelong wharves. The officers made sure that duty was fully collected, on both colonial and overseas trade. The Geelong Customs House was built in 1856 as a three storey ashlar sandstone and basalt structure, and a slate roof. Architect WG Cornish’ distinctive colonial Georgian style clearly reflected the influence of earlier NSW colonial buildings.

In 1857 Charles Dennys conducted Geelong's first wool auction. Wool stores were needed, as close to the foreshore as possible. In the very early days, the difference between a wool store and one for general merchandise was largely the existence of a wool press.

Not until 1872, with Dennys Lascelles bluestone wool store, was a specific design of building evolved for wool. A row of very impressive wool stores stretched down the street in a unified manner. Wagons entered from the street via an archway, discharged their load and moved out into a right of way on the other side of the building.

Sheep shed

Trip Advisor

Dennys, Lascelles, Austin and Co. was the proud owner of an important early modern structures in Australia. This concrete woolstore, designed by Edward G Stone, was mostly free of architectural decoration, and was in a style that anticipated European and Australian trends of the inter-war years. Dennys buildings had used solid bluestone in 1872, cement render in 1880 and a mansard tower in1889. And when expansion was planned in 1900, the firm elected to use the most modern material, reinforced concrete.

By the 1880s, no other Australian city had the diversity of wool related industries as Geelong. This city was eventually called the Wool Centre of the World.

Handling the recently sheared wool

The Strachan, Murray, Shannon and Co. wool store was systematically developed as the wool industry expanded, this four storey brick complex stylistically unified from the 1889 section onwards, to present an impressive austere Classical Revival structure of great note. 

The 2 storey brick Wool Exchange in Corio St was constructed in 1927-8, designed by local architects. The Wool Exchange was and is one of Geelong’s major public buildings from the inter war period and as a late example of the renaissance revival. Roofed with a barrel vault, the main sales room had a striking interior decorated with Neo-Greco detail. Sales of wool, sheepskins, hides, tallow and other products were conducted weekly at this site. Alongside Western District properties, railways, gorgeous wool stores, woollen mills, scouring works and port facilities, the Exhange illustrated the economic and social history of late C19th and early C20th Geelong.

Processed wool being readied for the loom

Trip Advisor

Dennys Lascelles and Co. still forms part of an historic woolstore precinct. Today it hosts the National Wool Museum, Australia's only comprehensive museum of wool, showcasing wool's enduring impact on Australia social and economic life. To explore the past, present and future of the Australian wool industry, the Museum acquires, documents, preserves, stores and exhibits objects and materials directly related to the Australian wool industry.

Completed items of clothing

Facebook

The collection shows textiles, images, machines and records with 25,000+ objects aross the City. Before you travel to Geelong, see some of the treasures on-line.