Loch Sport, Victoria

Loch Sport is a coastal tourist town situated on the Ninety Mile Beach and Lake Victoria in Central Gippsland, eastern Victoria, Australia. At the 2011 census it had a permanent resident population of 689, though the number swells to 4,000 during the Easter and Christmas holidays.HistoryBefore European settlement, the area was used for hunting and fishing (men's work), and the collection of water yams and other vegetable food (women's work). Some of their descendants still live in regional townships. Aboriginal middens are still present.In the 19th century British settlers cleared the land and began farming. Sandy soils dominate the flat coastal heath scrubland, which is surrounded by brackish lakes on the north and Bass Strait on the south. Later in the 19th century Melburnians discovered the recreational potential of the lakes—fishing, swimming and boating—and by the beginning of the 20th century Loch Sport was accessible via a dirt track, with plots of land surveyed for the nascent township. With increasing use of private cars, more people bought property in the town which, in 1980, was one of the last Victorian towns to receive electricity.