Sale is a city situated in the Gippsland region of Victoria, Australia and the council capital of the Shire of Wellington. It had an estimated population of 15,305 in 2022 according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The total population including the immediate area around the town is approximately 19,000 according to shire website.
Toponymy The Aboriginal name for the Sale area is Wayput.
The first town plots went on sale in 1850. When the new settlement was gazetted in 1851 it was named "Sale" – a tribute to General Sir Robert Sale, a British army officer who won fame in the first Afghan war before being killed in battle in Mudki(Panjab) in 1845. An SBS TV documentary, Afghanistan: The Great Game – A Personal View by Rory Stewart,Series 1, Episode 1, aired 26 September 2012 claims that it is actually named after his wife, Lady Florentia Sale (1790–1853), who wrote a famous journal of her experiences during the First Anglo-Afghan War which became a best seller in the 1840's and was serialised in The Times (UK) and possibly in Australia. Certainly, her letters to her husband were enthusiastically published in Australian papers.Southern Australian, Adelaide, Tuesday 25 October 1842, p. 2
In 2021, there was a proposal by locals to change the town name from 'Sale' − due to similarity with English word, sale − to either, 'Wayput' or 'Flooding Creek', but turned out to be unsuccessful.
History
Two famous Gippsland explorers, Paul Strzelecki and Angus McMillan, passed through the immediate area around 1840. The first white settler was Archibald McIntosh who arrived in 1844 and established his 'Flooding Creek' property on the flood plain country which was duly inundated soon after his arrival.
In the 1840's, drovers heading south to Port Albert crossed Flooding Creek and were confronted with the difficult marsh country around the Thomson and Latrobe rivers. A punt operated across the Latrobe River until a toll bridge was erected. A Post Office named Flooding Creek opened here on 30 September 1848 being renamed, somewhat belatedly, as Sale on 1 January 1854.
The town greatly benefitted from the 1851 gold rush at Omeo as it was situated on the Port Albert to Omeo route and was an important base for the goldfields, until the arrival of the Gippsland railway line. It was also an important service centre for East Gippsland and the Monaro Plains of New South Wales. A building boom took place c. 1855–65.
In 1863 the population of Sale reached 1,800 and it became a borough. The courthouse opened the following year. Shops, hotels and offices spilled over into Raymond Street and the first Anglican Church was erected on the site now occupied by St Anne's and Gippsland Grammar School. The Gippsland Times newspaper was established in 1861 while the first Star Hotel and the Criterion Hotel were built in 1865.
In terms of access, the first reasonable road from Melbourne arrived in 1865 and Cobb & Co established a rough-and-ready 24-hour coach service linking Melbourne and Sale. The Latrobe Wharf was built in the 1870s and two hotels emerged to exploit the new centre of activity. It was located near the present swing bridge although little is left.
Anthony Trollope visited Sale in 1872. Writing of the experience in Australia and New Zealand (1873) he spoke of the town's "innumerable hotels" and concluded from his impressions that the Aborigines had little chance of surviving as a race. In late December 1874, a visitor to the township recorded a description of Sale “which has all the appearances of a flourishing township”. He observed that “the streets are wide and shops plentiful, but fruit is scarce, a few stale cherries being all I could obtain from the principal shop in the place”.Letter to the Editor by 'Pedestriano', 'A Tour Through Gippsland (Letter No. 2)', The Record and Emerald Hill and Sandridge Advertiser, 18 February 1875, page 3.
With the growth of shipping on the local waterways and the Gippsland Lakes (and the establishment of a railhead at Sale in 1879) schemes emerged to develop Sale as a port. The construction of the Sale Canal (complete with turning circle) duly commenced in the 1880s, thereby linking the town via the Thomson River and the Gippsland Lakes to the open sea. It was completed in 1890. Other elements were the Sale Swing Bridge, completed in 1883, a high wharf, and a launching ramp which still exists in the heart of the city. However, neither the bridge nor the canal created the desired surge of trade and the depression of the 1890s soon engulfed the town.
St Paul's Cathedral is the cathedral church of the Anglican Diocese of Gippsland in Australia. The cathedral building, built in 1884, is a double-storey building with a rectangular footprint and is constructed of red brick and slate roofing. A two-storey post office, with clock tower, was built in 1884 (it was demolished in 1963).
HM Prison Sale was completed in 1887 and it operated for 110 years until it was replaced by a private Fulham Correctional Centre. The building has since been demolished, with only part of the large brick fencing still remaining. The site remained empty until 2014 when construction of the new Sale Police Station commenced there. It opened in March 2015.
Other landmarks in the town include Our Lady of Sion Convent and the Criterion Hotel. The former was designed by architects Reed, Smart and Tappin and built 1892–1901. Assembly halls and dormitory rear wing were added in 1938; the residential wing was added in 1953. The building is listed on the Register of the National Estate.The Heritage of Australia, Macmillan Publishers, 1981, p.3/133 The Criterion Hotel was built in 1865. It originally had a two-storey timber verandah, but this was replaced by a cast iron verandah between 1880 and 1900. It is considered "one of the most impressive hostelries in Victoria" and is listed on the Register of the National Estate.The Heritage of Australia, p.3/134 The Criterion Hotel closed in 2006 and its rapidly deteriorating condition caused local concern that it would be demolished. However, the site was subsequently purchased by a Traralgon-based developer who had previous expertise in restoration of commercial buildings. The Criterion received a complete rebuild in 2010/11 with the external heritage facade and verandah fully restored. It re-opened as a hotel, function venue and restaurant early in 2013.
With the growth of shipping on the local waterways and the Gippsland Lakes (and the establishment of a railhead at Sale in 1879) schemes emerged to develop Sale as a port. The construction of the Sale Canal (complete with turning circle) duly commenced in the 1880s, thereby linking the town via the Thomson River and the Gippsland Lakes to the open sea. It was completed in 1890. Other elements were the Sale Swing Bridge, completed in 1883, a high wharf, and a launching ramp which still exists in the heart of the city. However, neither the bridge nor the canal created the desired surge of trade and the depression of the 1890s soon engulfed the town. Sale became a town in 1924 and a city in 1950.
Sale became a town in 1924 and a city in 1950.
In World War II, the West Sale RAAF base was the landing site of two Japanese Mitsubishi Zeros. After the war, the disused site was repurposed as a immigration centre called West Sale Migrant’s Camp (alternatively West Sale Migrant Holding Centre) from 1949–1953.
Sale has seen much development and redevelopment in the past decade, one example being the multimillion-dollar redevelopment of the city's Port of Sale.Wellington Shire Council
Sale Swing Bridge The Sale Swing Bridge, built in 1880-1883 is a heritage engineering structure that is the oldest such bridge in Australia and one of only a very small number remaining in the country. It featured in the Australian film noir movie "The Tender Hook".
Geography
Setting Sale is located in the Gippsland region of Victoria, around east of Melbourne. It is situated on the Princes Highway where it meets the South Gippsland Highway, and is the main urban area in the Shire of Wellington. The city is around inland from the coast, and is located on the edge of a large wetland system upstream of the junction of Thomson River with the Latrobe River. There is a history of significant floods affecting Sale, including in 1978, 1990 and 2007.
Sale Canal Flooding Creek flows around the western side of the town, before becoming the Sale Canal, a excavated channel completed in 1890 that provides a navigable waterway from the Port of Sale to the lower reaches of the Thomson River, the Gippsland Lakes and the open sea. The Sale Canal connects to other local rivers and lakes, leading eventually to Lakes Entrance, an oceanside tourist resort situated near a managed, naturally occurring channel connecting the Gippsland Lakes to Bass Strait. Once steam boats and ocean-going craft were able to journey from Lakes Entrance to Sale, arriving at the docks at Sale to ferry passengers and goods from Eastern Victoria, although its success in such a role was short lived.
Lake Guthridge Lake Guthridge is a low lying retention basin in the city, which serves as an ornamental lake and features a park for children, barbecues, and a walking trail around the lake and car parking facilities. Prior to refurbishment in the mid-1990s Lake Guthridge suffered a blue-green algae problem that resulted in widespread fish mortality until local joggers and nearby residents complained of the associated stench causing council to act. Lake Guthridge has never been used as a food source.
Climate Sale has an oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb), with mild to warm summers and cool winters. Average maxima vary from in January to in July while average minima fluctuate between in February and in July. Mean rainfall is moderately low (averaging per annum), as the town is affected by foehn winds. Sale receives 141.1 precipitation days annually, with a maximum frequency of rain in winter. The town only experiences 54.8 clear days whilst having 167.5 cloudy days per annum. Extreme temperatures have ranged from on 25 January 2019 to on 3 July 2017.
Economy and infrastructure
Oil and gas
After oil was discovered offshore in 1965, the town experienced a boom period when it became the service and residential base of the Esso-BHP oil and gas exploration and development program. The unprocessed oil and gas are pumped through of undersea pipes to Longford, south of Sale. There the hydrocarbons are removed and used to produce LPG, commercial-grade natural gas, and stabilised oil. The gas is piped to Melbourne and the Victorian gas grid and up to New South Wales via the Eastern gas pipeline with a branch running under Bass Strait to Tasmania and the oil to Westernport Bay and thence to Geelong and Altona from where it is shipped interstate and overseas.
Esso's Longford gas plant was the site of a major fire on 25 September 1998 which killed two employees and crippled the state's gas supplies for a period of two weeks. Previously, Sale was significant as an office centre for the Esso corporation but these operations were relocated around 1990, leaving only the oil and gas processing facility in nearby Longford.
Commerce
Sale's main shopping precincts are Gippsland Centre and adjacent Raymond St Mall. Most other shopping style stores including clothing, music and food can be found along Raymond St, known to be the main street of Sale.
Fulham Correctional Centre, a medium security prison, is in the locality of Fulham to the west of Sal
Culture
Cultural venues Sale is home to the Gippsland Art Gallery, a major Victorian public gallery. The gallery presents a diverse exhibition program of contemporary, modern and historical exhibitions, with a focus on the landscape of South Eastern Australia. The gallery holds a collection of nearly 1,000 artworks, with a small selection on permanent view.