About this site

Geelong City Guide is a small independent visitor guide to Geelong, the city on Corio Bay, and to the Bellarine Peninsula, Surf Coast and Great Ocean Road around it. It is written and maintained by one person, independently.

This is not the council

This site is not the City of Greater Geelong. The council’s website is geelongcity.vic.gov.au, and that is where to go for rates, bins, permits, parking fines, planning, libraries, or anything else the council runs. Our address, geelongcity.com.au, is close to the council’s, and we know that can confuse people, so to be plain about it: we cannot help with council services, and we have no access to council records or staff.

We are also not Visit Geelong & the Bellarine, the regional tourism organisation, and we have no connection to any of the places we write about: the National Wool Museum, Geelong Gallery, the Old Geelong Gaol, the Carousel, the ferry and bus companies, or the hotels and tour operators. Nobody pays to appear here, and we use no council or tourism-board logos.

How we decide what goes on the site

Every page starts from sources we can name: the City of Greater Geelong’s own pages for council-run places such as the Carousel, the National Wool Museum and Eastern Beach; the venues’ own websites; the Victorian Heritage Database and Public Record Office Victoria for history; the Bureau of Meteorology for weather; and the transport operators for timetables and fares. Wikipedia is used for background and flagged when it is the only source.

Where sources disagree, and they often do on dates, counts and opening hours, we say which figure we used and why. Prices and opening hours carry the month we checked them. They change, so we link to the operator and ask you to confirm before you travel. Driving times come from a routing engine and run short in summer traffic, so allow extra.

We say “Victoria’s second-largest city” because that is what the sources support, and we avoid titles we could not trace to a reliable source.

Tours, hotels and how the site makes money

Tours on this site link to GetYourGuide. If you book through one of those links we earn a small commission, and you pay the same price you would otherwise. Some hotel links may also earn a commission through Stay22. We do not run any tours or hotels. The details are on our affiliate disclosure page.

Tell us when we are wrong

Prices go up, timetables change, a café closes. If you find something out of date or wrong on this site, email info@geelongcity.com.au with the page and what you saw. Corrections are welcome. For anything to do with council services, contact the City of Greater Geelong through geelongcity.vic.gov.au instead.