National Wool Museum, Geelong: tickets, hours and the wool story

The National Wool Museum is in Geelong’s city centre at 26 Moorabool Street, one block back from the waterfront and about 200 m from the Carousel. It is open every day from 10 am to 5 pm except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and Good Friday. Tickets are $13 for adults, $10 concession, $8 for children and $40 for a family. The museum tells the story of Australian wool, from Wadawurrung Country and sheep farming to the mills that made Geelong an industrial city, inside a bluestone wool store built in 1872.

Prices and opening hours

Ticket	Price
Adult	$13
Concession	$10
Child	$8
Family (2 adults and up to 4 children)	$40
Group, per person	$11

Opening	Detail
Days	Seven days a week
Hours	10 am to 5 pm (shop the same)
Closed	Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Good Friday
Groups	More than 20 people must book ahead
Card surcharge	0.25 percent on card and contactless payments

Checked October 2026 on the museum’s visitor page (last updated June 2026). The museum is run by the City of Greater Geelong.

The building is step-free from the street, with ramps to every level and accessible toilets on each floor. The Museum Shop is free to enter without a ticket.

Is the family ticket worth it?

Usually, yes. Two adults and two children on single tickets pay $42, so the $40 family ticket already saves $2. With four children the saving is bigger: $58 on single tickets against $40 for the family pass. The museum defines the family ticket as two adults and up to four children, so ask at the desk if your group is made up differently.

What is inside

The core exhibition is “On the Land: Our Story Retold”, which the museum describes as multi-award-winning. It tells the wool story for a modern visitor: Wadawurrung Country, farming and land management, and the changes the wool industry went through. Temporary exhibitions take up other galleries through the year; past shows include “Made in Geelong: Godfrey Hirst”, on the carpet maker.

The centrepiece is a 1910 Axminster Jacquard carpet loom. The museum says the loom is mechanically sound but “temporarily unavailable for demonstrations” because it needs a particular jute that has become hard to find (page updated July 2026). Staff and volunteers still explain how it works and talk about the Manor House Rug it produced. If seeing the loom run is the reason for your trip, ask the museum before you go.

The National Wool Museum describes itself as the only museum in Australia that comprehensively surveys the history of wool.

The building: a working wool store

The museum’s home is the Dennys Lascelles wool store, a bluestone building completed in 1872. The council’s history dates its opening to 1 August 1872, as the woolstore of CJ Dennys & Co. Wool from the farms of the district was stored here, a block from the bay. The building became the National Wool Museum in 1988.

Geelong’s wool history

Wool shaped early Geelong. Squatters had already taken up land around Corio Bay when the town was surveyed and gazetted in 1838, and by 1841 wool was being shipped from Geelong to England. The town became the port for the Western District, the grazing country to the west, and after gold was found at Ballarat in 1851 it was also the main port for the central Victorian goldfields.

Railways added to that role. From the 1860s Geelong was a rail and shipping hub linking Melbourne, Ballarat and the Western District, which earned it the nickname “The Pivot”. Woollen mills opened from the 1860s, and for about a century the city spun and wove wool as well as shipping it. Most of the mills had closed by 1974.

Industry moved on to cars. Ford’s Geelong plant, in operation from 1925, made engines for decades and ended manufacturing in 2016. Today the old wool buildings have new uses: this museum is one, and the Little Creatures brewery in South Geelong is another, inside a 1920s wool mill.

You will see grander titles for Geelong’s wool past online, but we found no official source for any of them. “The Pivot” is the nickname the records support.

Combining the museum with other sights

The museum is a good wet-weather stop on a Geelong Waterfront day: the Carousel and the painted bollards are about 200 m away. The Geelong Gallery is about 400 m away in Johnstone Park and free. For another side of the city’s history, the Old Geelong Gaol is about a kilometre to the south-east.

If the wool-mill story appeals, the Little Creatures brewery tour is the easy follow-on: a guided walk around the working brewery in its 1920s South Geelong wool mill, ending with a tasting paddle, for A$35 when we checked GetYourGuide in October 2026.

Getting there and parking

From Geelong railway station it is about 550 m on foot. By car, the museum says accessible parking is right in front, metered parking is on Moorabool Street, Brougham Street and Eastern Beach Road, and the Civic Centre car park on Gheringhap Street is free after 6 pm on Fridays and all weekend. The Geelong parking guide lists other car parks.

Visitor information has moved out of the museum: many old listings still put the visitor centre at 26 Moorabool Street, but it now operates from City Hall on Gheringhap Street and at the Carousel on the waterfront.