Landy Field, Geelong

John Landy Athletics Field is situated at the corner of Swanston Street and Barwon Terrace, South Geelong^[1] and was formerly known as Riverside Reserve. It sits adjacent to the Barwon River to the south and the Godfrey Hirst Pty Ltd carpet factory to the east.

Landy Field became a project of the Geelong Guild Athletic Club in the late 1950s. At the conclusion of the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, the Geelong City Council held a dinner on 15 January 1957 to honour the six Geelong Guild athletes (Ron Blackney, John Chittick, Robert James "Bob" Joyce, John Landy, Don MacMillan and John Vernon) who had represented Geelong and Australia at these games. During the dinner, where most of the neighbouring Cities and Shires were represented, John Landy made a speech on behalf of the honoured athletes, in which Landy compared overseas facilities available to athletes to those of Australia. Geelong, at that stage had no dediacted athletic field of any kind.

To confirm a proper management structure of Landy Field (Riverside Reserve) the Geelong City Council entered into an agreement with the Geelong Guild Athletic Club Trustees (Bervin E. Purnell: President, Rudi Hochreiter Snr: Secretary, Wal Whiteside: Construction Engineer and Charles Harding: Committee Member). This agreement was confirmed on 6 January 1961 and thus allowed for the construction of Landy Field to commence.

Finance

Surrounding Geelong municipalities and shires contributed $2,550.00 whilst the Geelong Guild Athletic Club donated $3,989.80 towards the construction of Landy Field. Most of the Guild money came from its life savings since the clubs founding on 13 July 1908.

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