Mallacoota is a small town in the East

Gippsland Gippsland is a rural region that makes up the southeastern part of Victoria, Australia, mostly comprising the coastal plains to the rainward (southern) side of the Victorian Alps (the southernmost section of the Great Dividing Range). It covers ...

region in the state of

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...

, Australia. At the 2016 census, Mallacoota had a population of 1,063. At holiday times, particularly

Easter Easter,Traditional names for the feast in English are "Easter Day", as in the '' Book of Common Prayer''; "Easter Sunday", used by James Ussher''The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, Volume 4'') and Samuel Pepys''The Diary of Samuel ...

and

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...

, the population increases by about 8,000. It is the last official township on Victoria's east coast before the border with

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

. Mallacoota has a regional airport ( Mallacoota Airport) YMCO (XMC) consisting of a gravel runway for light planes and an asphalt runway for commercial planes flying from Melbourne.
Aeronautical Chart
/ref> It is a popular holiday spot for

boating Boating is the leisurely activity of travelling by boat, or the recreational use of a boat whether Motorboat, powerboats, Sailing, sailboats, or man-powered vessels (such as rowing and paddle boats), focused on the travel itself, as well as sp ...

fishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques inclu ...

walking Walking (also known as ambulation) is one of the main gaits of terrestrial locomotion among legged animals. Walking is typically slower than running and other gaits. Walking is defined by an 'inverted pendulum' gait in which the body vaults o ...

the wilderness coast,

swimming Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, or other liquid, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Locomotion is achieved through coordinated movement of the limbs and the body to achieve hydrodynamic thrust that r ...

birdwatching Birdwatching, or birding, is the observing of birds, either as a recreational activity or as a form of citizen science. A birdwatcher may observe by using their naked eye, by using a visual enhancement device like binoculars or a telescope, b ...

, and

surfing Surfing is a surface water sport in which an individual, a surfer (or two in tandem surfing), uses a board to ride on the forward section, or face, of a moving wave of water, which usually carries the surfer towards the shore. Waves suitabl ...

. The Mallacoota Arts Council runs events throughout each year. Mallacoota Inlet is one of the main villages along the wilderness coastal walk from

to Victoria, and Gipsy Point is located at the head of the inlet.

History

Prehistory Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

the area was part of the territory of the Bidawal people. Shore-based whaling may have taken place in the area in 1841 under the direction of Captain John Stevenson. Settlers started to arrive in the 1830s. A small timber

lighthouse A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid, for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Lighthouses mar ...

was installed on nearby

Gabo Island Gabo Island is a island located off the coast of eastern Victoria, Australia, between Mallacoota and Cape Howe on the border with New South Wales. It is separated from the mainland by a wide channel; access is available by arranged flights an ...

in 1854, and the existing granite lighthouse was completed in 1862. By the 1880s commercial fishing was well established, with some catch being shipped south to Melbourne. At the same time the first tourists started to arrive.

Gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...

was discovered in 1894, after which the Spotted Dog Mine operated for three years. Mallacoota Post Office opened on 7 May 1894 and Mallacoota West in 1901. In 1928 Mallacoota West was renamed Mallacoota, and Mallacoota became Mallacoota East (closing in 1940). A satellite airfield was constructed during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

for the purpose of coastal defence. During the 20th century the

logging Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars. Logging is the beginning of a supply chain ...

farming Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

and fishing industries in the area declined, and the

tourism Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring (disambiguation), touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tour (disambiguation), tours. Th ...

and

abalone Abalone ( or ; via Spanish , from Rumsen ''aulón'') is a common name for any of a group of small to very large marine gastropod molluscs in the family (biology), family Haliotidae. Other common name In biology, a common name of a taxon o ...

industries grew. The town's largest employer, the abalone co-operative, was formed in 1967. In December 2019, fires in the East Gippsland region had a "significant impact" on Mallacoota and the nearby town of

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian ce ...

Geography

Mallacoota is one of the most isolated towns in the state of Victoria, off the

Princes Highway Princes Highway is a major road in Australia, extending from Sydney via Melbourne to Adelaide through the states of New South Wales, Victoria (Australia), Victoria and South Australia. It has a length of (along Highway 1) or via the former ...

and and six hours from

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

. It is and seven hours from

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

. It is halfway between

and

when travelling via

, though that is a long route between Australia's two main cities. It is known for its

wild flowers A wildflower (or wild flower) is a flower that grows in the wild, meaning it was not intentionally seeded or planted. The term implies that the plant probably is neither a hybrid nor a selected cultivar that is in any way different from the w ...

industry, the inlet

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environment ...

consisting of Top Lake and Bottom Lake, and

Croajingolong National Park The Croajingolong National Park is a coastal national park located in the East Gippsland region of the Australian state of Victoria. The national park is situated approximately east of Melbourne and south of Sydney. The name ''Croajingolon ...

that surround it. Gipsy Point is located at the head of Mallacoota Inlet, and is especially known for its bird life.

Sport

Golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

ers play at the course of the Mallacoota Golf and Country Club on Nelson Drive. The

Sydney Swans The Sydney Swans are a professional Australian rules football club based in Sydney, New South Wales. The men's team competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), and the women's team in the AFL Women's (AFLW). The Swans also field a reser ...

' 2005 premiership winning defender and former St Kilda player

Sean Dempster Sean Dempster (born 20 January 1984) is a former Australian rules footballer who played for the Sydney Swans and St Kilda Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). Early life Born in 1984, Dempster grew up in the Victorian tow ...

hails from Mallacoota. Mallacoota has a soccer club called the Mallacoota Blues. The club ranging from junior age groups to senior age groups plays in the Far South Coast Football Association (FSCFA). Mallacoota is also the host to the annual Mallacoota Cup soccer tournament.

Whale watching Whale watching is the practice of observing whales and dolphins ( cetaceans) in their natural habitat. Whale watching is mostly a recreational activity (cf. birdwatching), but it can also serve scientific and/or educational purposes.Hoyt, E. 2 ...

s for migrating and residential species such as the endemic, endangered

Burrunan dolphin The Burrunan dolphin (''Tursiops australis'') is a species of bottlenose dolphin found in parts of Victoria, Australia first described in 2011. Its exact taxonomy is debated: numerous studies support it as being a separate species within the genu ...

southern right whale The southern right whale (''Eubalaena australis'') is a baleen whale, one of three species classified as right whales belonging to the genus ''Eubalaena''. Southern right whales inhabit oceans south of the Equator, between the latitudes of 20 ...

s, and

humpback whale The humpback whale (''Megaptera novaeangliae'') is a species of baleen whale. It is a rorqual (a member of the family Balaenopteridae) and is the only species in the genus ''Megaptera''. Adults range in length from and weigh up to . The hump ...

s, are available on many locations along the coasts in their migration seasons. Fishing competitions are also popular in the town of Mallacoota with many being held on weekends throughout the year. These weekends help to support individual businesses with the number of people that visit the small town.

2019-2020 bushfires

Cause

On the late afternoon of 28 December, a lightning strike near Wingan River started a bushfire which burned southward towards the coast, roughly 40 km away despite mild conditions and little wind. Expected wind changes and catastrophic fire conditions predicted for the days to follow highlighted the risk to the township if the fire remained uncontrolled.

Warnings

Evacuation warnings were given to the potential fire impact area of East Gippsland at 3:00pm on 28 December resulting in over 30,000 holidaymakers exiting the East Gippsland region in the days to follow. Mallacoota and Cann River were excluded at that time from the warnings. Three

Country Fire Authority The Country Fire Authority (CFA) is a volunteer fire service responsible for fire suppression, rescues, and response to other accidents and hazards across most of the state Victoria, Australia. CFA comprises over 1,200 brigades organised in 21 ...

(CFA) strike teams, about 95 volunteer firefighters with 18 tankers and three command vehicles, were sent to the town immediately after the fire started on 28 December to assist the local CFA brigade and other emergency services, they arrived in the town early night the same day. Local emergency services estimated 10,000 people were in the town at the time the CFA strike teams arrived, including up to 2,000 residents. At 1:00pm on 29 December a "watch and act" notified residents it was too late to leave, stranding thousands in town after the

to Melbourne was closed. This was despite roads to New South Wales being safe to travel. At 8:34pm on 29 December the roads to Melbourne were reopened but the emergency warnings continued to advise people in the township it was safest to stay. The official emergency warning advice remained that it was safest to remain in Mallacoota despite all exits being available as there was a reasonable estimate of roads, mainly the one towards Melbourne, being impacted if the predicted conditions developed suddenly. On 30 December at 11:00am, local authorities alerted residents and visitors of the fire-front and shelter plans during an announced makeshift township meeting, not everyone in town chose to attend the meeting despite it being widely announced. The general advice through the meeting was that those wanting to leave could do so, but only via the North to Eden and

Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...

, this still deterred many of the residents and visitors that attended the meeting from evacuating. The roads were officially closed two hours after the meeting and the estimate was of 1,000 residents and 3,000 visitors still in the township for the remainder of the incident.

Impact

A southwest wind change pushed the fire through the

towards the town, roughly 60 km from the point of ignition within a few hours during the early hours of 31 December as a control line could not be established by Fire Management Victoria due to rough terrain and aircraft suppression was also unsuccessful the previous two days. An emergency warning was given at 4:40pm on 30 December for all to relocate to a safe evacuation location. This was the local hall or the wharf. Many boat owners launched their boats into the water and sheltered on the lake. It is reported that more than 50 boat owners with up to 300 people were on the lake on the evening of 30 December. The town was evacuated towards the main wharf, and into the hall, directly east of Mallacoota Airport and stayed there for over 24 hours. Aircraft suppression could not be committed on 31 December as the fire created its own weather system and thermal imaging of the fire could not be obtained accurately due to the thick layered smoke plume generated by the fire which turned day into night during the morning of that day at the location. At approximately 8:00am on 31 December a firestorm reached the industrial area of the township with the fire-front itself estimated to have been around 10 km wide, to which the CFA responded. Large sections of the town were lost during the hours that followed (mainly in Genoa Road and Terra Nova Drive) with over 135 homes destroyed and many others damaged, but the central areas of the town where people were sheltering and most of the town's significant infrastructure was saved from the fire-front which passed and continued its path North North East towards the border with New South Wales. The CFA and other emergency services personnel continued to work well into the morning of 1 January. No human fatalities were recorded.

Post fires

Despite the immediate threat passing, the fires continued to burn in and around the town. In the late afternoon of 31 December people started to leave their shelters and return to their houses. Many areas of the town were cut off from direct access due to active fires, including Mirrabooka Avenue and Lakeside Drive. In the early hours of the morning of 1 January thick smoke engulfed the town resulting in a panicked community seeking medical assistance and evacuation. This resulted in over 200 medical presentations to the Medical Centre in a single day and stores of Ventolin inhalers being depleted with the local pharmacy supplies being exhausted before the arrival of the fires. The CFA strike teams (personnel only) were extracted by air around mid-day on 1 January as fresh replacements could safely be deployed at “shift-change”.

Evacuation

On 2 January the

Royal Australian Navy The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is the principal naval force of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The professional head of the RAN is Chief of Navy (CN) Vice Admiral Mark Hammond AM, RAN. CN is also jointly responsible to the Minister of ...

arrived in Mallacoota bringing a small supply of essential medical supplies and 8000 litres of diesel fuel. On 3 January it commenced the large civil evacuation due to hundreds of kilometres of the damaged road preventing access to Mallacoota and surrounding towns. Nearly 1000 people and pets were evacuated on HMAS ''Choules'' with a 20-hour trip to

Hastings Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...

. There was far fewer than the initially estimated numbers, with as few as 3,000 people in the region at the time the fires hit. A further 450 people were evacuated by the

Royal Australian Air Force "Through Adversity to the Stars" , colours = , colours_label = , march = , mascot = , anniversaries = RAAF Anniversary Commemoration ...

once visibility allowed for air evacuation. On 5 January the fires threatening Mallacoota were feared to have joined up with the

Batemans Bay Batemans Bay is a town on the South Coast region of the state of New South Wales, Australia. Batemans Bay is administered by the Eurobodalla Shire council. The town is situated on the shores of an estuary formed where the Clyde River meets the ...

fires and were threatening the town of

Eden, New South Wales Eden is a coastal town in the South Coast (New South Wales), South Coast region of New South Wales, Australia. The town is south of the States and territories of Australia, state capital Sydney and is the most southerly town in New South Wales ...

Recovery

Roads for residents opened on the 18 January to allow them to cross the border to New South Wales to buy supplies. The

Australia Day Australia Day is the official national day of Australia. Observed annually on 26 January, it marks the 1788 landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove and raising of the Union Flag by Arthur Phillip following days of exploration of Port Ja ...

weekend provided an opportunity for campers and visitors to return in convoys to collect their belongings, but were required to leave immediately. By 6 February all roads into Mallacoota were opened.

Climate

Mallacoota has a

subtropical climate The subtropical zones or subtropics are geographical and climate zones to the north and south of the tropics. Geographically part of the temperate zones of both hemispheres, they cover the middle latitudes from to approximately 35° north and ...

(''Cr'') according to the

Trewartha climate classification The Trewartha climate classification (TCC) or the Köppen–Trewartha climate classification (KTC) is a climate classification system first published by American geographer Glenn Thomas Trewartha in 1966. It is a modified version of the Köppen ...

system or an

oceanic climate An oceanic climate, also known as a marine climate, is the humid temperate climate sub-type in Köppen classification ''Cfb'', typical of west coasts in higher middle latitudes of continents, generally featuring cool summers and mild winters ( ...

(''Cfb'') according to Köppen system. On 18 July 2016,

Mallacoota Mallacoota is a small town in the East Gippsland region in the state of Victoria, Australia. At the 2016 census, Mallacoota had a population of 1,063. At holiday times, particularly Easter and Christmas, the population increases by about 8,000 ...

recorded a high of due to the

foehn effect A Foehn or Föhn (, , ), is a type of dry, relatively warm, downslope wind that occurs in the lee (downwind side) of a mountain range. It is a rain shadow wind that results from the subsequent adiabatic warming of air that has dropped most of ...

(which typically occurs on the coastal plains of southeastern Australia).Weather map explainer: What are cold fronts, synoptic charts, isobars?
by Debra Killalea from

News.com.au news.com.au is an Australian website owned by News Corp Australia. It had 9.6 million unique readers in April 2019 and covers national and international news, lifestyle, travel, entertainment, technology, finance, and sport. Staff The organiza ...

. July 22, 2016. Retrieved November 15, 2021

Notable people

* E. J. Brady (1869–1952) author and poet *

(born 1984) Australian rules footballer *

Sue Hines Sue or SUE may refer to: Music * Sue Records, an American record label * ''Sue'' (album), an album by Frazier Chorus * " Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)", a song by David Bowie Places * Sue Islet (Queensland), one of the Torres Straits isla ...

(born 1959) children's author *

Bruce Pascoe Bruce Pascoe (born 1947) is an Aboriginal Australian writer of literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays and children's literature. As well as his own name, Pascoe has written under the pen names Murray Gray and Leopold Glass. Since August 2 ...

(born 1947) Indigenous Australian author

References

External links

Official East Gippsland tourism websiteMallacoota District Health and Support ServiceLocal community radio station, 3MGBMallacoota Arts Council
{{Authority control Coastal towns in Victoria (Australia) Fishing communities in Australia Towns in Victoria (Australia) Towns in East Gippsland Shire of East Gippsland