Shire of Moyne: History
The Shire of Moyne was formed in 1994 from the amalgamation of the Shire of Belfast, Shire of Minhamite, Borough of Port Fairy, the vast bulk of the Shire of Mortlake and Shire of Warrnambool, as well as parts of the Shire of Dundas, Shire of Mount Rouse and Shire of Hampden.
The Local Government Board, tasked with drawing up new council boundaries in Victoria's south-west in 1994, observed that the Moyne sub-area was "the most difficult for [it] to consider", thanks in part to "seemingly irreconcilable tensions between urban and rural interests". The Board first determined to amalgamate the largely agricultural Shires of Minhamite, Belfast, Mortlake and Warrnambool. Merger with the City of Warrnambool was considered next, but rejected, as it was felt that the city's urban economic interests were sufficiently detached from those of its rural hinterland that the city was strong enough to stand alone. Numerous submissions requested the same treatment for Port Fairy; options explored by the Board included maintaining the Borough of Port Fairy (rejected out of hand), a "coastal strip" municipality stretching from Port Fairy to Warrnambool, or amalgamation of the City of Warrnambool and Borough of Port Fairy into a single, non-contiguous municipality. In the end, the Board considered that Port Fairy belonged in Moyne, because Port Fairy had strong links to its rural hinterland in its role as a service town; Port Fairy's tourism sector was heritage-focused, unlike Warrnambool's; and the special challenges of managing the coastal–farmland interface between the two settlements were best dealt with by a rural-focused shire.
At public meetings held in the respective towns, Caramut and Macarthur residents strongly favoured being included in Moyne in preference to the proposed Shire of Southern Grampians. By contrast, the meeting at Peterborough, located at the extreme south-eastern tip of the Shire of Warrnambool, was split on the question of whether the town should join the Shire of Corangamite. In the absence of a strong argument either way, the Board declined to alter the established boundary.
In January 1996, after a further Local Government Board review, about 370 km2 of farmland in the Lake Bolac and Nerrin Nerrin districts was transferred from Moyne to the Rural City of Ararat. At the same time, Moyne gained about 40 km2 near Chatsworth from the Shire of Southern Grampians.