Template:Wp-Norlane, Victoria-History

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The suburb of Norlane was named after Norman Lane, a local serviceman from the district, who died working on the Thai-Burma Railway in 1943, after being captured in Singapore.

Norlane post office opened on 17 December 1945 as development of the suburb began. Norlane West post office opened on 13 October 1958.

With the enormous demand for housing in the early 1950s, people resorted to living in small dwellings, tents and partially-completed buildings. The Housing Commission of Victoria provided accommodation for families unable to rent or to afford the purchase of their own home.^[1]

In 1947 the government Housing Commission began its house-building program in Norlane, and when its program was completed in 1976, there were 2,464 Commission houses available for low-income renters. Much of the housing was for employees at the nearby Ford Motor Company, International Harvester, Shell, Pilkington Glass, Henderson's Springs and Pivot Phosphate factories.

Workers seeking employment (among them wartime migrants building new lives) flocked to Geelong to take up jobs, and the Victorian Government responded through its Housing Commission, by buying up broad acres north of the Ford plant and building homes by the hundreds. A number of the houses built in Norlane were prefabricated units imported from the Netherlands and France.^[1] In a decade, Norlane was transformed from paddocks to busy working class suburbia. By 1960, the urban landscape of streets, roads, crescents, courts and boulevards seen today had extended as far as Corio Village. For Geelong, it was an exciting time.

The suburb contains one site listed on the Victorian Heritage Register, the Ford Motor Company Complex on the Princes Highway (Melbourne Road).