Location
Norlane is a diverse residential suburb 4km north of the city and on both sides of the Princes Highway. It is bordered by Cowies Creek in the south, Cox Road in the north, Thompson Road in the west and Station Street in the east.

Description
Affordable housing close to shopping, transport and Geelong's largest employers make Norlane a popular suburb. The train between Geelong and Melbourne stops at the station in the south-east corner of the suburb. Norlane boasts excellent community facilities, including the large recreational complex, Waterworld. It offers a large indoor heated pool, gymnasium, waterslides, diving and children's pools. While Bell Park has several churches of Eastern European origin, most of Norlane's churches are of British origin. The current meeting place of the local Aboriginal people - the Wathaurong Community Co-op - is in Forster Street, Norlane. Norlane is just seven minutes drive from central Geelong and 50 minutes from Melbourne.

History
Norlane is a relatively new suburb. It was named after Norman Lane, a local serviceman captured at Singapore during the second world war and who died working on the Burma-Thailand railway in 1943. After the war, many young Geelong families could not afford to buy or rent a house and there was pressure on the Government to build affordable housing for them. Adding this pressure was the huge influx of migrants, brought in to work in the region's fast-developing industries.

In 1947, the Housing Commission began a building program in Norlane to meet demand. By completion of the program, there were 2,464 commission houses. The peak building period was from 1951 to 1957. Much of the housing was for employees at the nearby Ford, International Harvester and Phosphate Co-operative plants. More than 1,200 houses were prefabricated units imported from Holland and France.

Coincidentally, Norlane attracted a large Dutch community along with British immigrants. The commission's shopping centre, Labuan Square, opened in 1954, while a converted bus was used to service the grocery needs of other Norlane neighbourhoods until further shopping centres were built. Enterprising residents also operated a number of illegal 'backyard' shops to satisfy the huge demand. Special 'pram' buses were used to take Norlane's young mothers and their children into the city to shop.