Point Lonsdale 3225 |
Point Lonsdale, a seaside resort and residential area, is near the end of the Bellarine Peninsula. Its neighbouring township is Queenscliff, and it is 27 km. south-east of Geelong.
Point Lonsdale looks out towards The Rip, the waterway by which Port Phillip Bay is entered from Bass Strait. It was named by Captain William Hobson, the naval officer in charge of a marine survey vessel, after Captain William Lonsdale the first Police Magistrate in Port Phillip (1837).
Because Queenscliff was right on The Rip it was settled before Point Lonsdale. Apart from a signal station (1854) and a lighthouse (1863), Point Lonsdale remained undeveloped until shortly before extension of the railway from Geelong to Queenscliff (1879). In 1876 there were land sales at Point Lonsdale, and in 1885 a boarding house was opened. A coffee palace was opened five years later, and a primary school in 1898.
Several facilities began after the 1900s: public hall (1912), golf club (1920s) and bowling rinks (1930s).
Point Lonsdale has a wide foreshore reserve along the Bass Strait surf beach, ending at the present lighthouse (1902) right on the geographic point. There are several elevated viewing points, and below the lighthouse is a cave reputed to have been lived in by the wild white man, William Buckley, who absconded from the short-lived Sorrento settlement in 1803 and rejoined white society when he found Batman's temporary camp at Indented Head in 1835.
Past the Point is the sheltered Lonsdale Bay beach with a foreshore, camping ground and a memorial for a Marconi wireless station which first successfully transmitted messages to Tasmania in 1906. The foreshore reserve runs continuously eastwards along the isthmus joining Point Lonsdale to Queenscliff. Near the Marconi memorial is the cemetery, which records fatalities from several famous shipwrecks.
The shopping centre is about 500 metres north of the Point, over the road from the bowling club.
In 1987 the median house price at Point Lonsdale was $100,000 and in 1996 it was $145,000.
Census figures have not been published for Point Lonsdale's population.
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