Traralgon  Victoria

Once a quiet country town favoured as a stop-over for drovers and miners, Traralgon has ridden to prosperity on its large deposits of brown coal. The coal has generated cheap electric power which, in turn, has attracted major manufacturing plants and heavy industry to the region. Thick forests which shroud the mountains of the Strzelecki Ranges to the north have made Traralgon Victoria’s major centre for the paper-making industry. Despite the industrialisation, the town has retained its rural attraction to draw visitors to its parks and nearby bush-walking trails. Local riverways and lakes provide excellent fishing while the coast, its marine parks and Wilson’s Promontory National Park are within comfortable driving distance. Winter brings the skiing enthusiasts to the neighbouring snowfields. Traralgon was the birth place of MacFarlane Burnet, one of the great medical scientists of the 20th century who shared the 1960 Nobel Prize with Briton Peter Medawar for their work on acquired immunological tolerance.