A LONG AND OFTEN DIFFICULT PAST

TIMELINE:

The Geelong Advertiser opines: “The Market Square is a misnomer. It should be called a domestic wilderness spoiled. Neither bush nor town, it is too dirty for the one and too wild for the other. The centre of Corio, it is a desert in summer, in winter a bog. The square is as unsightly as it is unclean … it is a hollow heart, a vacancy where there should be the throb of commercial life and activity.”

Water trader William Gray installs a tank in Market Square to run his business.

Tightrope walker Madame Dallecase wows crowds with two public performances in the square on a rope suspended 18m above ground.

First clock tower installed. 18m high, it must be wound weekly.

First market building constructed to protect traders and shoppers from weather.

Exhibition Building opens for the Industrial and Juvenile Exhibition before being transformed into a theatre in 1881.

Geelong’s first picture theatre opens at the corner of Little Malop and Moorabool streets.

The Exhibition Building makes way for Moorabool St’s Solomons Building (still standing), which opens as a department store. Victoria Square, which included a statue of Queen Victoria, fountains, a bandstand, a ladies kiosk, flower beds and seats, is revamped.

The original market building is torn down after a referendum of local residents approves plans to reshape the commercial precinct.

A scoreboard is erected in parkland on Little Malop St to keep cricket fans abreast of Don Bradman’s latest Ashes batting feats.

The entire Market Square precinct, bordered by Malop, Little Malop, Yarra and Moorabool streets is built in, with McCann and Jacobs streets as intersecting north-south streets.

City’s first multi-storey carpark is built.

Intersection of Moorabool and Little Malop streets is blocked to traffic, creating the first Little Malop St mall, highlighted by the Delacombe fountain.

Geelong City Council spends millions buying out leaseholders in Market Square to build an indoor, multi-storey shopping plaza. Traders set up shop in temporary buildings on Little Malop St while the construction takes place. They move into the new digs in 1985 and construction of the mall begins. Total cost is about $30 million.

The Little Malop St mall opens. Closed to all traffic and heavily landscaped, it features an upsized fountain, sunken amphitheatre, civic clock, shaded bench seats and ceremonial flagpoles.

Traffic returns to Little Malop St, and the Delacombe fountain is replaced by bubbling water features. The water features are out of action between 2006-2012 because of the drought.

13-year-old Norlane schoolgirl Clare Morrison is spotted in the mall at midnight on a Friday, but is found dead at Bells Beach, little more than seven hours later. Police are still seeking clues to the mystery.

16-year-old Ricky Balcombe is stabbed to death in the middle of the afternoon outside the Market Square lifts near the mall entrance. Twenty-three years later Karl Hague is tried and convicted of the murder. He was sentenced to a 26-year prison term last year.

A woman, 22, is brutally raped in the mall. Her attacker, Luke Benjamin Gill, is eventually sentenced to 17 years’ jail.