Location
Breakwater is an industrial and residential area on the Barwon River 4km south-south-east of Geelong city.
Description
The Breakwater railway station and residential areas are near the Geelong racecourse. The James Harrison College and part of the Gordon TAFE, though technically in Thomson, are at the north-east edge of Breakwater, opposite the racecourse.
Historic houses are now surrounded by houses built since the 1950s. Further south is a large industrial estate that includes carpet, textiles and food manufacturing industries. The industrial land is only just beginning to fill but is separated from housing by a buffer.
The suburb has many open spaces. To the south, Breakwater reserve has an oval and a tennis club. The land between the industrial sector and the river is part of a flood plain. And the superb sporting grounds of Belmont Common are just across the Breakwater Road bridge.
History
The name Breakwater comes from a rock ford constructed across the Barwon River at the instigation of Geelong's first police magistrate, Captain Foster Fyans, in 1837. The ford, built using convict labour, stopped the tidal inflow of salt water up the river, thus supplying the infant township upstream with fresh river water.
Below the ford, the river attracted industries. By the 1870s there were fellmongeries, tanneries and a meat-preserving works. A short way upstream, the Geelong racecourse, and later the showgrounds, were established. Street names such as Leather, Fellmongers and Tanner commemorate Breakwater's origins.
The town's first school and hotel were built between 1853 and 1863. The hotel, near the breakwater, and several other historic buildings and 1880s residences, still stand.
The reinforced concrete sewage aqueduct, built across the Barwon River in 1913 to 1916, is a structure of extraordinary design and on the Victorian National Estate Register. It has 14 spans covering more than 760 metres and was used to carry sewage from the city to an ocean outfall at Black Rock. It was decommissioned in 1993.
