Former premier Ted Baillieu reveals link to the ‘other Kardinia’

Former premier Ted Baillieu has revealed the Geelong connection between his home and a Belmont landmark.

Former premier Ted Baillieu’s love for the Geelong Football Club is legendary, and on face value, the nameplate on his home doffs a cap to the team from Kardinia Park.

But the name on the Baillieu family home of 27 years in Calvin St, Hawthorn, actually has links to a Geelong era that stretches beyond even the establishment of the venerable football club to one of this region’s earliest leading citizens.

Dr Alexander Thomson established the original Kardinia property on the southern bank of the Barwon River when the Geelong district was still in it infancy, serving as a member of the parliament of NSW before resigning in 1844 in protest at having to travel to Sydney for sittings.

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Mr Baillieu said when he bought the Hawthorn home he thought it serendipity when he discovered it was named Kardinia, given his fondness for the Cats.

But his further research uncovered the true connections to Geelong for the home he describes as “the other Kardinia”.

Kardinia is a Wadawurrung word meaning sunrise, dawn or new beginning.

Mr Baillieu said the Hawthorn Kardinia was named in honour of Dr Thomson’s Geelong property when it was built in the 1890s.

The other Kardinia, at Calvin St, Hawthorn, was built in the 1890s for the granddaughter of Dr Alexander Thomson and her husband.

The grand arched entrance shows the nameplate.

“His daughter Jane married Henry Creswick – who became Sir Henry Creswick – and Henry in the mid-to-late 1840s bought the first house east of the Yarra, which is a bluestone house called the Hawthorns,” Mr Baillieu said.

“Henry and Jane had a bunch of kids and their first child Catherine married a guy named Talbot Hamilton, and they were all jammed in to the original property, so Henry and Jane built this house for Catherine and Talbot and called it Kardinia. It’s right on the top of Hawthorn Hill.”

Mr Baillieu has put the home on the market with $9m- $9.9m hopes.

Kardinia was the original home of Geelong pioneer Dr Alexander Thomson and was subsequently extended and renovated in the 1860s and 1880s.

The three-storey mansion has an expansive, six-bedroom, five-bathroom floorplan courtesy of a renovation about 17 years ago that opened up the spectacular views.

“I came and just walked in and walked straight out again,” Mr Baillieu said. “As I was an architect in another life, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

“It was rundown but on top of the hill, it faces west with a dress circle view of the greatest show on earth, which is the city of Melbourne with all the weather coming.

“I sat down at the table, opened the documents for the first time and saw it was called Kardinia. I thought this was meant to be.”

Former premier Ted Baillieu in a famous Geelong Cats fan.

Dr Alexander Thomson was Geelong’s first mayor and a member of the New South Wales and Victorian parliaments.

Dr Thomson became Geelong’s first mayor in 1851, when Kardinia was still a timber slab house, having been one of the leading citizens pushing for an independent Victorian colony.

Heritage reports show Dr Thomson, who was born in Scotland in 1798 and arrived in Victoria via Tasmania in 1836, constructed the first stone part of the house in the early 1850s. He died in 1866.

He served several terms as mayor, was elected to state parliament and was a director of the Geelong-Melbourne Railway Company, whose line was completed in 1857.

The original stone house is still present, though subsequent owners, including two former mayors added extensions and renovations in the 1860s and 1880s to create the mansion seen at 1 Riverview Terrace today.

Plans have landed for an almost $15m riverside development on the former GenU site next to Kardinia. The site was sold by Colliers last year and the project involves the construction of 34 townhouses and the restoration of the house as a private home. Picture: Alan Barber

The Salvation Army ran a children’s home at Kardinia between 1947 and 1986, before disability service provider GenU (and its predecessor Karingal), used it as its head office.

Geelong developer Fathom Group is working through a planning application for a $14.6m project to subdivide the property, restoring and renovating the original house as a private home with gardens fronting the river.

Mid-century buildings near the house would be demolished and 34 townhouses built in six blocks at the rear of the homestead, two of which would face Riverview Terrace.

Fathom Group director John Grigg said the developers were working through a cultural heritage management plan process before a permit could be approved.

Kardinia Park didn’t come into being until 1872, and Geelong Football Club didn’t call it home until the 1940s.

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