Torquay real estate

Torquay sits on Wadawurrung country, and that country is part of the Kulin nation, whose lands take in Port Phillip Bay. The area that now makes up the town began as the outer edges of pastoral properties.

Elias Harding held the land around what is now the town centre, reaching as far as Point Addis. William Neil took the "South Beach" run, which lay to the town's north. Robert Zeally had earlier been based around Camperdown and later took charge of the South Beach run.

Picnickers started coming to the spot from the 1860s. It was then known as Spring Creek, named for the watercourse along its south-western edge, and the 1882 Victorian Municipal Directory listed it as Puebla. James Follett settled there in 1871. Follett came from Torquay in Devon, England, and suggested the name the town took in 1892.

The town's first shop opened in 1890. In 1891 Follett's Pioneer Coffee Palace gained a liquor licence and took the name Palace Hotel. A Post Office opened in the town on 20 August 1894. The Spring Creek bridge, which linked the town to Anglesea, was built on 3 April 1908.

In 1891 a sailing ship, the Joseph H. Scammell, struck the reef near Point Danger. The ship became wedged on the reef and broke up in heavy seas, and its cargo washed onto the beach at Torquay and was looted. Anchors from the Scammell are on display at the Torquay Front Beach and at the Torquay boat ramp.

A primary school opened in 1900 in the newly built Presbyterian church. It moved to the recreation hall in 1901, and a permanent school building did not open until 1910. By the 1920s the town had a golf course, tennis courts and a bowling green. There were once 145 bathing boxes on the main beach.

The Torquay Surf Life Saving Club was formed in 1946, and its current clubrooms opened in 1971 after the previous ones burnt down. The club is the oldest and largest in Victoria. In 1967 a surfboard shop opened in the town, and Rip Curl, Quiksilver and Piping Hot began there.

Development has increased in the area in recent years. The "old town", the strip between the highway and the beach, is almost fully developed. Homes spread to Jan Juc, west across Spring Creek, during the 1970s, and from the 1980s estates were laid out to the north of the town.

Long-term residents and the people behind some developments came into conflict, particularly over the site of the old primary school on Bristol and Boston Roads. The government sold that site for luxury apartments and a larger shopping centre rather than keeping it for community uses.

In 2001 work began on The Sands golf club and residential development north west of the town, on ground that had been the former Torquay Tip. That tip had closed by the early 1990s, and the resort opened there in 2004. A magazine called History Matters comes from Torquay Museum Without Walls and keeps documenting the town's past.

Torquay faces Bass Strait 21 km south of Geelong, within Surf Coast Shire and with the postcode 3228. Spring Creek marks its western edge, and Point Danger and Zeally Bay are among its coastal features.

Anchors from the Joseph H. Scammell, wrecked near Point Danger in 1891, are displayed at the Torquay Front Beach and the boat ramp. The Torquay Surf Life Saving Club, formed in 1946, is the oldest and largest in Victoria, and the brands Rip Curl, Quiksilver and Piping Hot all began in the town.