Milling it over: Geelong’s new life in forgotten places

The gradual departure of heavy industry from Geelong over the last 30 years has left a legacy of forgotten places and an urban identity marooned between fading industrial modernism and an uncertain post-modern world. The rigor mortis of heavy manufacturing has been accompanied by rhetoric of despair about the city’s future. Amid planning approaches focusing on the oft-competing ends of city-centre revitalisation and sprawling suburban growth, the defunct spaces of Geelong’s industrial past are providing an unlikely crucible for renewed optimism, borne from grassroots creativity. This flourishing of creative expression in gritty spaces is a meeting of history, heritage and artistic endeavour that presents the palimpsest of the city writ large; creating unexpected connections between people and places once thought lost in the ethereal whispers of the past. The reinvention of these spaces as sites of and for new makers suggests a need to re-evaluate the significance of industrial heritage by engaging with the perspectives of those actively reinterpreting it. Focusing on the rejuvenation of an abandoned paper mill, this paper explores the recreation of Geelong’s industrial heritage to understand the cultural role of these spaces and how they act as creative incubators, while considering the implications for connections between people, place and creative practice.