Gippsland
| Gippsland Region Victoria | |||||||||||||||
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John Longstaff's Gippsland, Sunday night, 20 February 1898, depicting the "Red Tuesday" bushfires that ravaged Gippsland | |||||||||||||||
The location of Bairnsdale, a town in Gippsland | |||||||||||||||
| Coordinates | 37°51′S 147°35′E / 37.850°S 147.583°E | ||||||||||||||
| Population | 271,266 (2016 census) | ||||||||||||||
| • Density | 6.52772/km2 (16.90672/sq mi) | ||||||||||||||
| Area | 41,556 km2 (16,044.9 sq mi) | ||||||||||||||
| Time zone | AEST (UTC+10) | ||||||||||||||
| • Summer (DST) | AEDT (UTC+11) | ||||||||||||||
| Location | 120 km (75 mi) E of Melbourne | ||||||||||||||
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Gippsland (/ˈɡɪpslænd/) is a rural region in the southeastern part of Victoria, Australia, mostly comprising the coastal plains south of the Victorian Alps (the southernmost section of the Great Dividing Range). It covers an elongated area of 41,556 km2 (16,045 sq mi) east of the Shire of Cardinia (Melbourne's outermost southeastern suburbs) between Dandenong Ranges and Mornington Peninsula, and is bounded to the north by the mountain ranges and plateaus/highlands of the High Country (which separate it from Hume region in Victoria's northeast), to the southwest by the Western Port Bay, to the south and east by the Bass Strait and the Tasman Sea, and to the east and northeast by the Black–Allan Line (the easternmost section of the Victoria/New South Wales state border).
Gippsland is divided by the Strzelecki Ranges and tributaries of the Gippsland Lakes into West Gippsland, South Gippsland, Latrobe Valley, Central Gippsland and East Gippsland. At the 2016 Australian census, Gippsland had a population of 271,266, with the principal centres Traralgon, Warragul, Drouin, Bairnsdale, Moe, Sale, Morwell, Wonthaggi, Leongatha, and Phillip Island. Gippsland is known for mining, power generation and farming as well as its tourist destinations — Phillip Island, Wilsons Promontory, the Gippsland Lakes, Walhalla, the Baw Baw Plateau, and the Strzelecki Ranges. It also includes around a hundred islands, mostly between the mainland and Tasmania.