Penny for bar’s design
FOR a couple of generations of young Belmont residents the Belmont Hotel’s Copper Bar was the place to be on weekends from the 1960s to the 1980s, being within walking distance from home.
The Copper Bar was so named because of the thousands of copper coins, mainly pennies, that adorned the walls and the doorway to the bar.
The bar was a separate building to the main brick hotel, built uphill from the pub on High St on land that is now occupied by a modern office block.
Long-time publican Cliff Splatt and his copper coins featured in the Geelong Advertiser (main picture) in 1983 when he had added a map of Australia on one side of the bar and an Australian coat of arms on the other side of the bar, both made up of old copper pennies.
The Belmont Hotel started its days as the Racecourse Hotel halfway up the High St hill in 1852 in the days when it led to the then Geelong race- course at Marshalltown beside the Barwon River.
The racecourse was moved to its present Breakwater site in 1908 after the racing club sought a site that was closer to the centre of town.
The second of our photos shows a double decker bus outside the early Belmont Hotel in the early 1900s.
A bus service to Belmont was introduced in 1914, two years after Geelong’s tram service started operations.
The trams were unable to cross the narrow Moorabool St Bridge until after it was rebuilt in 1926, with the first tram crossing the new bridge in 1927.
The Belmont tram travelled up High St hill and terminated at the corner of Roslyn Rd.
The final photo shows the Belmont Hotel in 1940, a year before it was demolished to make way for the more modern brick building that remains on the same site. Contact: peterjohnbegg@gmail.com