White Night Geelong 2022 – A perfect evening for it

11 Oct White Night Geelong 2022 – A perfect evening for it

When Mistress Butterfly suggested a return ferry trip to Geelong last Saturday to experience White Night Geelong 2022, I jumped at the opportunity. Light art is one of my favourite forms of art, and it is always fun to take day trips out of the city for a bit of an adventure. Port Phillip Ferries were putting on a special trip from Docklands to Geelong on the Saturday night. It is a bit of a long trip at 1.5 hours, but they serve alcohol, some snacks and other beverages on board, which can make for a fun trip across the waves to Geelong or Port Arlington.

The ferry trip to White Night Geelong was fun. We had a table downstairs and sipped on wine, and played Uno Flip. When we arrived in Geelong it was 7:05 pm and we had a dinner reservation at 7:30 pm at the Edge. It was not quite dark yet – as Daylight Savings has made the evenings lighter for later, so we wandered along the Geelong Foreshore for a while before we went to eat a nice if somewhat noisy dinner at the Edge on the Geelong Foreshore.

If you are planning to go to White Night Geelong in the future, I would definitely recommend booking a restaurant. Geelong White Night certainly draws a crowd. And most places were not taking ‘walk-ins’. There are some nice restaurants in Geelong. We considered the Sailor’s Rest and Wah Wah Gee restaurant on the pier as well.

After dinner, it was dark enough to start to see the lights through the streets for White Night Geelong 2022. We initially moved up the main path into the city centre and saw some lovely light art along the way. The roads were packed with people, but there was still enough room to move. And we followed our noses through the city centre, seeing whole buildings alight with projections, trees with neon highlights, walls with light art illustrations and sculptures lit from both the inside and the outside with light.

My favourite installation was the Indigenous storytelling projection at the Geelong Art Gallery. It was a very touching story about Country, which helped me to understand a deeper awareness of the Indigenous perspective.

Although there were six of us in our group. Mistress Butterfly was getting understandably frustrated at continually losing people, so we split up into pairs. Mistress Butterfly and I left most of the light art behind and went wandering in the city centre. We found some interesting shops and restaurants and eventually made it to our destination of the Geelong Cellar Door Wine Bar on Little Malop Street in Geelong. It was so lovely there, as it always is. We had a scrumptious smoked salmon pate plate, wine and blood orange soda.

All too soon, it was time to get back to the ferry to board our return trip to Melbourne. The trip home felt a lot longer. Probably because we didn’t have either alcohol or Uno to while away the time, but it was still nice to see the lights of the bay and the shipping route on the arrival back into Melbourne. These photos looking back towards the Geelong foreshore as we departed were suggested by Mistress Butterfly.

White Night Geelong 2022 was such an inspiring and wonderful event. I would really recommend checking it out next year. And the ferry is a nice way to travel.

Bon festival!