Morwell

Morwell is a town in the Latrobe Valley of Gippsland, Victoria, Australia, east of Melbourne beside large deposits of brown coal. The coal lies close to the surface in thick seams, so it is mined from open pits. For most of the 20th century the coal mined around the town was burned in power stations that supplied much of the electricity of Victoria.

The Gunaikurnai people are the traditional owners of the Latrobe Valley. Land along the Morwell River was taken up by settlers in the middle of the 19th century, and the town grew after the railway from Melbourne to Gippsland reached it in the late 1870s. The State Electricity Commission of Victoria opened open-cut coal mines and power stations in the valley from the 1920s, and Morwell grew with workers and their families from Britain and the rest of Europe. The Hazelwood power station, south of the town, ran from the 1960s until it closed in the late 2010s.

The paper mill of Opal Australian Paper at Maryvale, north of Morwell, makes office paper and packaging from the timber of the plantations of Gippsland. Coal from the open-cut mines of the valley still feeds the remaining power stations nearby.

The Morwell Centenary Rose Garden, opened in the early 1980s, holds thousands of rose bushes of many varieties. The Latrobe Regional Gallery, in the center of the town, shows art of Gippsland and Australia. Morwell National Park, in the hills to the south, protects forest gullies with tree ferns and orchids. The Hazelwood Pondage, a lake built to cool the old power station, has warm water used for sailing and fishing.