Mount Moriac is a

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in the

Surf Coast Shire The Surf Coast Shire is a local government area in the Barwon South West region of Victoria, Australia, located in the south-western part of the state. It covers an area of . It had a population of 32,251 in June 2018. It includes the towns o ...

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, Australia. It is named after the 270-metre-high extinct volcano which is a prominent feature of the area. The name is believed to derive from the local Aboriginal word for hill. In the 2016 census, Mount Moriac had a population of 240 people. A farming community developed at Mount Moriac as early as the 1840s, with a hotel opening in 1844. A Catholic school was opened by 1853, and a Catholic church (St Patrick's) built in 1863. It became the administrative centre of the district, with a police station, court, and the offices of the Barrabool Hills Road Board. By 1865, it also had a flour mill, several shops, the offices for the

Shire of Barrabool The Shire of Barrabool was a local government area about southwest of Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria, Australia. The shire covered an area of , and existed from 1853 until 1994. History Barrabool was incorporated as the second roa ...

, a hotel, and Presbyterian and Bible Christian churches. Mount Moriac State School opened in 1875. The railway line was extended from Geelong to Colac in 1877, and a station was opened at nearby Moriac. A new township developed around the railway station, and over time took prominence over the older Mount Moriac settlement. The shire offices shifted to

Geelong Geelong ( ) (Wathawurrung language, Wathawurrung: ''Djilang''/''Djalang'') is a port city in Victoria, Australia, located at the eastern end of Corio Bay (the smaller western portion of Port Phillip Bay) and the left bank of Barwon River (Victo ...

in 1949, and ceased holding meetings in the shire hall at Mount Moriac in 1976. Mount Moriac Primary School was merged into nearby Moriac Primary School in the 1990s. Mount Moriac Railway Station PO opened on 16 October 1882, was renamed Mount Moriac PO in 1909, and closed on 31 July 1978. An earlier post office was opened at "Duneed" in 1854, renamed Mount Moriac PO in 1864, and renamed Moriac PO in 1909. Today, the town has a hotel
Mount Moriac Hotel
, a cemetery, and a Catholic church (St Patrick's). It also has a sporting reserve (Mount Moriac Reserve), with two ovals, a pavilion and club rooms, netball courts, tennis courts, and a pony club. It also has a memorial to the artist

Arthur Streeton Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton (8 April 1867 – 1 September 1943) was an Australian landscape painter and a leading member of the Heidelberg School, also known as Australian Impressionism. Early life Streeton was born in Mount Moriac, Victoria ...

, who was born at Mount Moriac (in the area once known as Clifford) which is in the Parish of Duneed.

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Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

and

FM stations can be received in Mount Moriac. It is also possible to pick up some Colac stations on FM in some parts of the area, notably Mixx FM, although the signals are weak. Television services in Mount Moriac are received from Melbourne transmitters. It is also possible to pick up

Ballarat Ballarat ( ) () is a city in the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia. At the 2021 census, Ballarat had a population of 111,973, making it the third-largest urban inland city in Australia and the third-largest city in Victoria. Within mo ...

UHF channels in Mount Moriac in elevated areas, but a high-gain antenna is needed to receive all Ballarat TV transmissions.

Clifford

In the early 1850s, a separate hamlet named Clifford, located within the modern Mount Moriac locality, developed around the intersection of Cape Otway and Devon Roads and the Princes Highway. There was a hotel (Gorell's Clifford Hotel), school, church, store and blacksmith there. This area took its name from Clifford Farm, the property of Lawrence Trewin. The school, run by the Church of England, opened as Colac Road on 15 August 1853, was renamed Duneed in 1856, and renamed Clifford in 1871. The school closed on 18 August 1875, and the church closed in the same year. A fire on 27 May 1877 destroyed the hotel, store and post office. The hotel proprietor decided not to rebuild, and the hamlet had reportedly ceased to exist by 1890.

References

{{authority control Towns in Victoria (state)