Moe

Moe ( MOH-ee) is a town in the Latrobe Valley in the Gippsland region of Victoria, Australia.

Moe (MOH-ee) is a town in the Latrobe Valley in the Gippsland region of Victoria, Australia.It is approximately 130 kilometres (80 miles) east of the central business district of Melbourne, 45 kilometres (30 miles) due south of the peak of Mount Baw Baw in the Great Dividing Range and features views of the Baw Baw Ranges to the north and Strzelecki Ranges to the south.

At June 2018, Moe had an estimated urban population of 16,812 (including Newborough). The population has been slowly shrinking with an average annual rate of -0.1% year-on-year for the five years to 2018. It is administered by the Latrobe City Council.

Moe was originally known as The Mowie, then Little Moi. The town's name is believed to derive from a Kurnai (local Indigenous) word meaning "swamp land".

Moe is a navigation point and stopover for tourists en route to Erica, the historic goldfields township of Walhalla, the Walhalla Goldfields Railway and Mount Baw Baw. Lake Narracan is nearby, and Moe is home to the annual Moe Cup horse races, the Moe Jazz Festival and the recreated historic settlement Old Gippstown. The city has locally produced Aboriginal/Koori art and is regularly home to local Australian Football and Netball Finals in the Gippsland Football & Netball Leagues and the Mid Gippsland Football League. The region is represented by Gippsland Power in the TAC Cup competition.

A small gold discovery was made in 1852. The small settlement on the Narracan Creek was a stopover en route to the Walhalla goldfields further north. A Post Office opened on 17 March 1862.In 1878 the Shire of Narracan was proclaimed, and the railway arrived from Morwell. Moe railway station was a key station, with a roundhouse, and connections to the now-closed Walhalla, Thorpdale and Yallourn lines. The town was surveyed in 1879. Moe was declared a city in 1963.

A major local industry is based around the brown coal deposits in the Latrobe Valley east of Moe and electricity generation. The area is also noted for its dairy industry.

Moe High School opened in 1953, with the Official opening in November of the same year. The school was closed and merged into Lowanna Secondary College in 1994, with the previous Moe High School location becoming a housing estate.