Almanac Poetry: Limeburners Point, Geelong
Prussian Blue. [Wikimedia Commons.]
Limeburners Point, Geelong
You look out from the boat ramp and see,
well, not very much at all
– an aluminium refinery
across a flat lagoon
and, to your left, the drab blue-grey
of Corio Bay.
Disappointing that a place
with such an evocative name
is so bloody boring.
(Acknowledgements: first appeared in Vernacular magazine, 2001, then in my second poetry collection, Lionheart Summer, Picaro Press, 2008, reprinted by Ginninderra Press, 2018.)
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About
Kevin Densley is a graduate of both Deakin University and The University of Melbourne. He has taught writing and literature in numerous Victorian universities and TAFES. He is a poet and writer-in-general. His fifth book-length poetry collection, Please Feed the Macaws ... I'm Feeling Too Indolent, was published in late 2023 by Ginninderra Press. He is also the co-author of ten play collections for young people, as well as a multi Green Room Award nominated play, Last Chance Gas, published by Currency Press. Other writing includes screenplays for educational films.
Hang on a moment, KD. Limeburners Bay is where we racked up a few klicks (miles in the Fifties) in our eight-oared training craft.
The super beaut rowing 8s were housed in the Barwon River sheds and brought out for Barwon River training prior to the annual Head of the River. Heats and if we were good enough, into the finals.
My memories altho’ six decades old are of a pretty, grazing area surrounding Limeburners.
Hi Richard. Thanks so much for your memories – I’m certain that Limeburners Bay and Limeburners Point are in distinct, opposite parts of Corio Bay. This is an important consideration – in general, and in relation to my poem. Limeburners Bay is very near Geelong Grammar School. Limeburners Point is opposite Point Henry, separated from the former Alcoa site by a smallish lagoon. Those of us (i.e. you and me and various others) who know the bay well and are fond of it, can picture the distinction well, I feel. Please Google ‘Limeburners Bay’ and ‘Limeburners Point’ and you’ll know exactly what I mean.
I’d love for you to get back to me on this topic.
P.S. As an aside – remarkably, the rowing sheds on the Barwon River were not substantially submerged after the recent heavy rains and floods, at least not when I went over the bridge adjoining them a couple of times in the last month or so.
To clarify even further, Limeburners Point is in East Geelong, on the edge of the Botanical Gardens.
Yep, spot on KD. It’s six decades back since I lived permanently in CatLand. The school you mentioned is where my Dad sent me for my secondary years. He was a chalkie at the GGS feeder school in Geelong (Bostock House) so got a hefty rebate on the huge fees levied at that senior school. So that’s how I know Limeburners Bay.
But also I seem to remember Limeburners Point near Alcoa. Can’t remember why we went there but I think one summer holidays we might have been showing interstate visitors around.
My Mum was still living in Upper Skene St. at that time so we stayed at her place.
Always good to get your feedback, Richard. I knew a little about Geelong Grammar School from personal experience. You’ll recall responding to the Footy Almanac piece I wrote about participating in the annual Public Schools athletics there (around 1975) and suffering an injury (‘My Most Enjoyable Sports Injury’) – as a result, Grammar’s Matron really made a fuss of me and made me feel a lot better before I was taken away for stitches.
Of course, being a Geelong-ite, Bostock House is also known to me. Even more familiar is the beautiful suburb of Newtown, where I spent my teenage years (Austin Street) and later rented rooms in the historic Rannoch House mansion, on the corner of Skene and Pakington Streets.
We weren’t all that well off, KD. My father spent a lot of time boozing at the Bell Park Golf Club and the Corio Club just off Pakington Street, on the way down to Geelong West.
When he won the snooker championship quite comfortably at the latter club one year, the president remarked on presenting Father with his prize: “Indicates a youth not so well spent!”
Our Bostock House school accommodation backed onto Rannoch House so that’s how I knew the location of that historic old place.
In Upper Skene Street we lived on the low side of the street looking upwards to the grand old Victorian and Edwardian-era mansions on the top side.
More interesting info, Richard. Thanks for adding further material – I do enjoy local history discussions.
Of course, living where you did you’d also be familiar with the location of the Geelong Workers’ Club in Skene Street, which at one point was also a centre for Geelong’s Folk Club, and formed part of Edgecumbe, the mansion owned by one of Geelong’s wealthiest people, Silas Harding, who died in 1894. As far as I’m aware, the Edgecumbe mansion is still structurally intact, even if a significant part of its former grounds is now occupied by the Aberdeen Motor Inn – and the building itself has been divided up in various ways.
Within the last year or two, Rannoch House was offered up for sale and was expected to fetch around $!2 million, but I’m not sure of the final outcome there. (I only rented some back rooms of the place, mid-1990s. At the time, the property was being extensively renovated.)
RE Rannoch House, just to be clear, it was expected to fetch around $12 million.