subdivided and offered for sale as the Belmont Hill Estate. The grammar school council indicated that an adjacent suburban subdivision was not conducive to their plans for a boarding school which did not cater for day boys. Consequently, the school decided to buy land on the opposite side of Geelong at Corio, and the land at Belmont was sold for further residential subdivision. On 6 December 1913, 86 residential sites were auctioned, forming the Belmont Heights Estate. The streets of this new estate were named after well-known Polar explorers: Scott, Shackleton, Peary and Amundsen. The years immediately after the First World War witnessed the transformation of the rural farmland in Belmont into a residential area. Further subdivision occurred in the 1920s, stimulated by the construction of a new bridge over the Barwon River in 1926, and the consequent extension of the Geelong tram system to Roslyn Road in 1927. Houses erected during the interwar years (and those following World War II) were affordable homes for textile workers, drivers, labourers, clerks, secretaries, teachers and builders. Major housing development in Belmont stepped up in the years following World War II, with housing developments spreading westwards, from the original township on the hill towards Highton. Later development in the 1970s saw subdivision to the south towards Grovedale. The CSIRO established a laboratory facility in Belmont in 1948 to perform research to support the wool industry. It became one of the leading textile research centres in the world, but in a reorganisation of the CSIRO in the early 2010s, the site was closed and staff moved to the Australian Future Fibres Research and Innovation Centre at Deakin University Waurn Ponds. Aviation The Belmont Common was a site of early aviation in the Geelong area. The first person to fly from the Common was Hans Andersen, a garage owner who flew his home made biplane until he crashed the plane at Lovely Banks. He was followed by Charles and Percy Pratt. Pilots involved in World War I, they erected a large hangar and workshops, from which they taught gliding and flying, overhauled aeroplanes and motors, and practised aerial photography. In 1928, 10,000 Geelong residents turned up at the aerodrome to welcome aviator Bert Hinkler who had just completed a 16-day England-Australia flight. Percy Pratt started the Geelong Gliding Club in 1929 which still exists at Bacchus Marsh. On 4 August 1937 Percy Pratt took off