Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Innovation and Industry) Share this | Hansard source

Corio Bay is a beautiful bay in any season. The bay can stop people in their tracks when it first comes into view. You see visitors parked along the Esplanade, cameras out, marvelling at the sparkling end to the straight-line drive down the Princes Highway from Melbourne. Corio Bay has always been a working bay, surrounded by an oil refinery, an aluminium smelter, a fertiliser plant and a salt works. It was the arrival point for many of the colony’s early settlers and is still home to Victoria’s largest regional port. With its long history of industry, the bay is very much a part of the fabric of life in Geelong.

It is a place of retreat and recreation, of fishing, sailing and swimming and, indeed, carols by candlelight at Christmas time. But it could be more so, for those of the north of Geelong do not have meaningful access to our greatest asset. There is a walking path around the top end of the bay, where the city centre meets the bay. This promenade is well loved by walkers, joggers and cyclists. More than 100 painted bollards dot the path, telling the story of Geelong through the historical characters they depict. But the waterfront promenade only extends some three kilometres around the tip of the bay from Western Beach to the beautiful 1930s Eastern Beach bathing precinct. It is spectacular but does not do Corio Bay full justice. There is another stretch of about nine kilometres along the western edge to Limeburners Bay that, if added to the waterfront promenade, would create a truly iconic walking and cycling track similar to the Bondi to Bronte walk in Sydney. It would also open the bay to those in the north of Geelong. It could link to a path that heads through Lara towards the You Yangs, making a complete cycling and walking track—linking Geelong to its geographical identity.

The major issue is access around the port and some sections of private land. But I believe that, with a combination of boardwalks and goodwill, access could be achieved. The utilisation of boardwalks has already been planned for other parts of the walk around the bay. At my instigation, the City of Greater Geelong will convene a meeting of the relevant landowners. Today I appeal to them to embrace this as a great community project of which they can all be a part. We are fortunate in Geelong to have a bay that is a world-class asset, and my aim is to make it a place for everyone to enjoy. I will finish by saying that a local football club in my electorate has been fortunate enough to make the national preliminary finals in their competition. They are playing against a team called Collingwood on Saturday night, and I know that all of us in Geelong are very much riding on their success.

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