Gippsland

General information

gippsland-map

The Gippsland region has approximately 247,710 residents. It covers the area from the Bunyip River in the west to the New South Wales border in the east and from Omeo in the north to Phillip Island in the south. It is geographically diverse including parts of Victoria's alpine areas, some relatively remote farming communities, coastal communities and the regional centres of Moe, Morwell, Traralgon, Sale, Warragul, Wonthaggi, Leongatha and Bairnsdale.

Municipalities

Gippsland contains six municipalities:

Regional Ethnic Communities’ Councils/Migrant Resource Centre’s:

Diversity in the Region

The majority of Gippsland residents were born in Australia; only four per cent of the population were born in one of the main non-English speaking countries (NESCs) and four per cent again speak a language other than English (LOTE) at home. For those people born outside the country, most were from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. Gippsland’s Italian population , which is 1 per cent, is the only LOTE spoken by more than 0.5 per cent of the population and accounts for 25 per cent of all LOTE speakers

English and LOTE speakers have broadly similar age profiles in Gippsland region. Both groups have similar numbers of speakers in the 25–44 and 45–64 age groups and see speaker numbers decline in the aged 65 years and over category. English sees a much sharper decline in older speakers however, and the two languages differ markedly in the proportion of speakers aged less than 25 years. While this is the largest group for English speakers (with 240,000 speakers), for LOTE speakers there are slightly more people in the 25–44 age group than the less than 25 age group (64,000 to 61,000), as shown in the following figure.

Latrobe is one of the regional centres in Victoria with the highest proportion of overseas-born residents (along with Geelong). The number of people coming into the region from overseas will increase by more than 13,000 through to 2026.

More recently a number of new communities have emerged including from the African continent. At present these communities are not highly identifiable through Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data however, feedback from Centrelink indicates that they are in contact with some 3,000 people who are more recently arrived to the region.

Language spoken at home, Gippsland

Language	Number	%
English	218,152	91%
LOTE	9,342	4%
Not stated	11,412	5%
Total	238,906	100%

Prepared by OMAC with special tables from ABS 2006 Census (July 2011)

Country of birth, Gippsland

Country of birth	Number	%
Australia	196,703	82%
Other English speaking countries	13,694	6%
Main non-English speaking countries	10241	4%
Other countries*	3,538	1%
Not stated	14,730	6%
Total	238,906	100%

*Includes Inadequately Described, At Sea, Not Elsewhere Classified
Prepared by OMAC with special tables from ABS 2006 Census

Country of birth and LOTE by Regional Centre

	Bass Coast	Baw Baw	East Gippsland	Latrobe South	Gippsland	Wellington
% Born in Australia	77.2%	85.1%	83.8%	80.5%	83.2%	84.3%
CoB - largest groups	UK, NZ	UK, Netherlands	UK, NZ	UK, Netherlands	UK, Netherlands	UK, NZ
Language other than English	10.8%	6.5%	7.2%	10.5%	7.5%	8.4%

Proficiency in Spoken English in the Gippsland Region, Victoria, 2006 Census

English Proficiency	Gippsland Region
Speaks English only	218,145
Speaks another language and speaks English
Very well	5,903
Well	2,630
Not well	933
Not at all	201
Not stated - (both language and proficiency not stated)	10,822
Not stated - (language stated, proficiency not stated)	280
Total Persons	238,914