20. Gippsland Region

The Gippsland region commences at Cape Howe, includes the long Ninety Mile Beach, and extends down to South Point on Wilsons Promontory, the southern tip of the continent. It faces the south through to the east into Bass Strait and has a humid temperate climate, with westerly winds delivering waves along this drift-aligned coast. Sediments are quartz-rich, with longshore transport to the north and east deposited in the Cape Howe dunes and a shelf sand body off the cape. Ninety Mile Beach has a long regressive barrier, which has minor dune transgression at its eastern end as it curves more into the westerly winds. Further east transgressive dunes become more common cumulating with the large dune field at Cape Howe which it overpasses into NSW. This chapter describes the coastal processes, beaches, barriers, sediment transport and sediment compartments along the Gippsland-eastern Wilsons Promontory coast.