The city is a gateway to many renowned tourist attractions, namely the scenic Great Ocean Road, the Shipwreck Coast and the Bellarine Peninsula. Geelong is also home to the second oldest Australian Rules football club in the world, the Geelong Football Club, known by locals as The Cats.

Geelong is covered by the municipality of the City of Greater Geelong.

Arts and entertainment

The city is home to a vast number of pubs and nightclubs and venues for live music and has given birth to a number of notable Australian bands such as Magic Dirt.

The Geelong Advertiser is the second oldest continuously run newspaper in Victoria and was established in 1857. Also circulated are the free Geelong Independent, and Geelong News newspapers, as well as smaller regional suburban newspapers serving the Bellarine Peninsula area. Melbourne newspapers, The Age and The Herald Sun are readily available.

Geelong does not have television broadcasting facilities and relies on broadcasts from Melbourne for free to air television reception. A set of small analogue UHF TV in-fill repeaters located at the Highton water basin service a television black spot in the suburbs of Highton & Newtown. The Geelong region also receives Cable and Satellite Television service through Pay-TV operators Foxtel & Neighbourhood Cable. Channel 31 is also available.

Geelong is serviced by local bus routes covering most of the city and surrounding suburbs. Taxi and hire car services are also available. Pakington Street in Geelong West was served by an electric tramway service until 1956, when the service was replaced by buses subcontracted out to Bender Buslines (currently owned by Kefford Corporation).

Regular V/Line train services to Melbourne depart the Geelong railway station hourly and to Warrnambool twice daily. Train travel time from Geelong to Melbourne Spencer St Station is approx 60 minutes, making it a popular alternative to driving for Geelong residents working in the Melbourne area. Train services between Melbourne and Geelong received a government funded upgrade called the Regional Fast Rail project, with new high speed locomotives called V'locity 160 manufactured by Bombardier in Dandenong scheduled to service the Geelong to Melbourne line beginning in 2006.

A ring road is in planning to bypass the greater Geelong metropolitan area. The bypass will begin near Lara and exit near Waurn Ponds and is due to begin construction in 2006. The Bellarine Peninsula links to the Mornington Peninsula via the Searoad ferry. Avalon Airport is several kilometres to the north-east. Geelong also has many kilometres of bike trails.

Airports

• Avalon Airport is located in Avalon, Victoria to the north of the city of Geelong. The airport is designed to cater for jet aircraft, and comprises a single runway. It was originally constructed in 1953, to cater for the production of military aircraft. In 1959, Qantas established a training base at the site, and the runway was extended to cater for jet aircraft, becoming, for some years, the longest in the Southern Hemisphere. It continued to be used to build military aircraft until the 1980s, and for aircraft maintenance until 1996. Avalon Airport is also home to low cost aircraft Jetstar owned by QANTAS. QANTAS aircraft servicing has moved from Kingsford Smith International Airport in Sydney.

• Geelong Airport is a small airfield specifically for light aircraft located in Mount Duneed. It is primarily used for scenic flights and private aircraft.

Source: Wikipedia