Thomson

Thomson is a small residential suburb 3 km south-east of central Geelong. It is immediately east of the Geelong showground in Breakwater.

In the late 1940s the State Housing Commission began a housing estate of about 410 dwellings in East Geelong. There was already a primary school there, having opened in 1929 and named after a former Director of Education, Frank Tate. The area of the estate was named Thomson, after Dr Alexander Thomson (1800-66), a Geelong settler. The Thomson post office opened in 1950.

In 1953 the Housing Commission reported that its estate was fully built, but the Thomson Progress Association continued to press the Commission for community improvements to at least 1956. A State technical school opened in 1958 about 700 metres south of Tate Street, next to the district’s first primary school, East Geelong (1857). Both are in Thomson. The technical school became a campus of the Gordon Institute of TAFE.

Thomson has two recreation areas: St Albans Reserve, a nineteenth century space in the south of the suburb, and the Thomson reserve in the north, with a community centre and two ovals. It is adjoined by a kindergarten and a Catholic primary school (1949).

Thomson’s census populations have been:

At the 2011 census, residents’ median incomes were 78% of the Victorian median.