Moe

Moe, city in western Gippsland, Victoria, Australia. It lies in the La Trobe River valley about 84 miles (135 km) by rail southeast of Melbourne. Its name is derived from an Aboriginal word for mud swamp. Moe was settled in 1856 and was proclaimed a borough in 1955 and a city in 1963. Its industries include engineering, photographic processing, concrete pipe manufacturing, sawmilling, textile making, and dairying. Many of the residents of Moe are employed in Yallourn (4 miles [6 km] to the east) by the State Electricity Commission, a company that had planned and developed the area since 1921 but which was broken up and largely privatized in the mid-1990s. Formerly a town, Yallourn was demolished in the 1970s to allow open-cut mining of the coal below. Large brown-coal mines at Yallourn supply briquette plants, gas-manufacturing plants, and two power stations, which produce much of the state’s electricity. Pop. (2001) urban centre, 15,512; (2011) Moe-Newborough statistical local area, 15,292.