Market Square, Geelong

Consisting of eight acres (2.9 hectares) of land, the area was reserved by Governor Sir George Gipps as a town square during the initial surveying of Geelong.

Suggestions of high ground at top of Moorabool, Yarra or Gheringhap Streets were put forward at the time, the indecision lasting into early 1856.

The clock tower was of prefabricated construction, composed of cream and brown tiles held in place by ornamental cast-iron work.

It was described by Sir Thomas Maltby in an article printed in The Geelong Advertiser as "a lifelike model of a Kangaroo about four feet high, exclusive of the four cardinal points on which it pivots freely.

Sir Thomas Maltby purchased this irreplaceable relic thereby saving it from being turned into scrap metal and is still in perfect working order.

Lloyd moved the motion that a block of vacant land be set aside in Geelong for a town square, which was duly passed.

By September 1854 the council received from Lloyd a design of the clock and tower", which included his drawing of a Kangaroo for the weather vane.

Melbourne sculptor John Swan Davie modelled the statue in clay, before a plaster cast was made, which was then sent to bronze founder Mr Parlanti of London.

The building housed a department store owned by Mr Julius Solomon, and was officially opened on 16 April 1913.

Solomons closed in 1966 and was replaced by a Woolworths supermarket, before the building was incorporated into the Market Square Shopping Centre development in the 1980s.

To provide this, Cowley's Motor Garage (located on the former Exhibition Building site) was demolished, and a three-level concrete carpark built.

The Geelong Regional Commission on 6 November 1981 released a plan that would see a massive shopping centre extend from Little Malop Street through to the waterfront.

[3] This proposal did not proceed, with the City of Geelong instead deciding to develop their own shopping centre on the Market Square site.