A hatchet job on our great regatta
I’VE seen some opportunities go begging at Geelong in my time.
A grand prix, the Imax theatre, a Red Bull air race, a convention centre, cruise ships, business investments too numerous to mention ... but I reckon the greatest loss is an ongoing one.
It’s Geelong’s continual reluctance to use the international opportunity of its magnificent waterfront. It is a loss of ambition.
You can put this down to a whole range of things: shortsightedness, parochialism, a fear of success, obstacles from outside Geelong, selfish politics.
The real problem, however, is Geelong people fighting Geelong people. Empire-building and niggling. People guarding their own little fiefdoms, nicking what they can when they can, sabotaging good ideas if they’re not their own.
It does my head in why we’re never on the same page.
Look at the God unholy mess City Hall, the State Government and the Royal Geelong Yacht Club have just done to the greatest homegrown international event Geelong hosts. I mean our most historic sporting event — you can read about it on page one of the Geelong Advertiser’s very first edition, in 1840.
I’m talking about the Australia Day weekend’s Geelong regatta. The Festival of Sails on our magnificent Corio Bay, which yachting legend Sir James Hardy tells me is the second-best sailing course in the world.
It’s protected from heavy seas but super-fast because of the prevailing winds and a full-on workout for the best yachts on the planet.
This regatta is under threat because Sandringham Yacht Club has been granted the OK for the Australian Yachting Championships — on the Australia Day weekend.
The Geelong regatta hosts numerous championships, including several international titles, but the Sandringham club is moving a contest that was last staged in Sydney in March to clash with our brilliant festival.
That’s exploiting our good gra- ces, our hard work and our reputation. All with the approval of Victorian and local authorities. It’s outrageous.
Moreover, it’s coming on the back of the festival’s competitions being rearranged at Geelong this year to accommodate the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race — which used the yacht club as its media headquarters.
Now I don’t mind doing everything we can to push Cadel’s race — it attracts a huge audience — but not if it means trashing the regatta.
The regatta/Festival of Sails attracts more than 3000 sailors, many from around the world, and many of them the best in the world. It rivals, and according to some sailing experts even beats, the UK’s Cowes Week.
About 100,000 people attend the event, it generates millions for the local economy and it is an event that is Geelong through and through. In its earlier days, it was bigger than the Melbourne Cup. Geelong letting its regatta just slide away — in favour of the bike race and into Sandringham’s hands — is like Melbourne giving up its great Cup. Like Stawell surrendering its Stawell Gift. You just can’t do it.
But that’s just what’s going on. Next year’s regatta is the milestone 175th and it’s being eclipsed by other events — by our own doing. It’s ridiculous. It’s appalling planning, pathetic and wrong.
I love Geelong’s waterfront. It is our best natural asset, the jewel in our crown. I’ve been out sailing there with my partner Elissa at Wednesday twilight racing.
I’ve seen seals rolling on their backs, fish jumping out of the water being chased by other fish.
These days it’s an incredibly healthy, sparkling bay. The fish are back, the dolphins are back, the marine life is magnificent.
As a yachting destination, the world envies us. Corio Bay is our best marketing asset, a worldclass, north-facing bay that should be driving Geelong’s future.
I’ve bellowed from the rooftops for a new pier to draw international cruise ships. For a convention centre on the water, to draw international conferences and investor interest.
And any time I’ve shown overseas visitors the Geelong waterfront they’ve been totally gobsmacked at its beauty.
Geelong should be capitalising on this magnificent bay. Our waterfront should be driving the 21st century smart city that Geelong is trying to become. For heaven’s sake, we have Deakin University — driving so much of our new diversified city — right smack on the waterfront.
It should be our face to the world. To our Asian neighbours, to Europe and to the US.
And yet every time we start to make headway, some dumb, selfish, small-minded interests seem to get in the way. And guess what, even with the Victorian sports minister a Geelong MP, we let this sort of nonsense happen.
One word. Deplorable.