Sandy Point, Victoria
Encyclopedia
Sandy Point is a township in south Gippsland
Gippsland
Gippsland is a large rural region in Victoria, Australia. It begins immediately east of the suburbs of Melbourne and stretches to the New South Wales border, lying between the Great Dividing Range to the north and Bass Strait to the south...

, Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....

 near Wilsons Promontory
Wilsons Promontory
Wilsons Promontory is a peninsula that forms the southernmost part of the Australian mainland and is located at . South Point at is the southernmost tip of Wilsons Promontory and hence of mainland Australia...

. At the 2006 census
Census in Australia
The Australian census is administered once every five years by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The most recent census was conducted on 9 August 2011; the next will be conducted in 2016. Prior to the introduction of regular censuses in 1961, they had also been run in 1901, 1911, 1921, 1933,...

, Sandy Point had a population of 227, growing to several thousand during the holiday period. It is surrounded by areas of significant natural heritage.

Sandy Point is one of the few coastal towns in this region to remain relatively unaffected by the housing boom along the coast. This is partly due to its distance from Melbourne (around 2 hours) and the fact that a lack of town sewerage has meant a ban on further sub-division.

History

The Bratowooloong people of the Gunai
Gunai
The Gunai or Kurnai is an Indigenous Australian nation of south-east Australia whose territory occupied most of present-day Gippsland and much of the southern slopes of the Victorian Alps. The nation was not on friendly terms with the neighbouring Wurundjeri and Bunurong nations...

 nation lived in the area before European settlement. The first Europeans to visit the area were three shipwreck
Shipwreck
A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....

ed sailors in 1797. Irish convicts escaped south from Sydney and landed on Seal Island where several men were stranded and found by George Bass
George Bass
George Bass was a British naval surgeon and explorer of Australia.-Early years:He was born on 30 January 1771 at Aswarby, a hamlet near Sleaford, Lincolnshire, the son of a tenant farmer, George Bass, and a local beauty named Sarah Nee Newman. His father died in 1777 when Bass was 6...

 who put them ashore near Shallow Inlet to walk back to Sydney. No more was ever heard of them.

Sealers and whalers visited the area in the first half of the nineteenth century. However, it wasn't until the 1860s that the area was settled by cattle farmers. The arrival of the Gippsland Railway improved the viability of local farms and made dairy farming in the area.
The Post Office opened on 2 September 1926, and was closed in 1994.

The development of the town as a tourist location started in earnest in the 1960s but has been restricted by its natural heritage values.

Surrounding areas

The Sandy Point area has a large spit system and its shoreline, on Waratah Bay
Waratah Bay
Waratah Bay is located in south Gippsland, Victoria. The bay is an arc of almost 20 kilometres of flat sandy beach framed by Cape Liptrap to the west and Wilsons Promontory in the east.-Surrounding townships:...

, is considered of high heritage value. Sandy Point's surf beach is patrolled during the summer months and is considered good for surfing. The beach on Waratah Bay is 18 kilometres (11 mi) long, running between Walkerville
Walkerville, Victoria
Walkerville Victoria, Australia, is a tiny fishing village on Waratah Bay in southwest Gippsland, about 190 km southeast of Melbourne. The small town, originally known as Waratah, is separated into North Walkerville and South Walkerville...

 at its northwestern end and Wilsons Promontory
Wilsons Promontory
Wilsons Promontory is a peninsula that forms the southernmost part of the Australian mainland and is located at . South Point at is the southernmost tip of Wilsons Promontory and hence of mainland Australia...

 at its southeastern end.

Three kilometres east of Sandy Point lies a river inlet known as Shallow Inlet
Shallow Inlet
Shallow Inlet is a marine inlet, opening on to Waratah Bay on the western side of the Yanakie Isthmus in South Gippsland, Victoria, south-eastern Australia...

. This sandy, tidal inlet is a popular fishing spot and a popular area for windsurfing
Windsurfing
Windsurfing or sailboarding is a surface water sport that combines elements of surfing and sailing. It consists of a board usually two to four metres long, powered by the orthogonal effect of the wind on a sail. The rig is connected to the board by a free-rotating universal joint and comprises a...

 and kitesurfing
Kitesurfing
Kitesurfing or Kiteboarding is an adventure surface water sport that has been described as combining wakeboarding, windsurfing, surfing, paragliding, and gymnastics into one extreme sport. Kitesurfing harnesses the power of the wind to propel a rider across the water on a small surfboard or a...

. A speed sailing record was set here by the Yellow Pages Endeavour
Yellow Pages Endeavour
The Yellow Pages Endeavour, or YPE, is an Australian sailboat designed for speed sailing, which held the outright 500 meter world record from October, 1993 to November, 2004, when it was taken by windsurfer Finian Maynard; the YPE still holds the C class record...

 in 1993.

On 13 December 2005, an attempt to reclaim this record failed when the craft operated by the Macquarie Speed Sailing team suffered a structural failure.

Natural habitats

The area near Sandy Point contains a diverse range of habitats including mangrove
Mangrove
Mangroves are various kinds of trees up to medium height and shrubs that grow in saline coastal sediment habitats in the tropics and subtropics – mainly between latitudes N and S...

s, extensive stands of coastal heathland as well as remnant coastal grassy forest. It features a wide range of invertebrate species. There are large populations of white-footed dunnart
Dunnart
Dunnarts are furry narrow-footed marsupials the size of a mouse, members of the genus Sminthopsis. They are mainly insectivorous. A male dunnart's Y chromosome has only 4 genes, making it the smallest known mammalian Y chromosome....

s and koala
Koala
The koala is an arboreal herbivorous marsupial native to Australia, and the only extant representative of the family Phascolarctidae....

s living in the region.

Until 10,000 years ago, Sandy Point was an underwater slope leading to plains now lying underneath Bass Strait
Bass Strait
Bass Strait is a sea strait separating Tasmania from the south of the Australian mainland, specifically the state of Victoria.-Extent:The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Bass Strait as follows:...

.

External links

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