Home to one of the world's biggest brown coal deposits, the Latrobe Valley provides the state with 90% of its electricity. A visit to the PowerWorks Visitors Centre will reveal the intriguing history of Yallourn and the "open cut".

During the past century, the towns and cities of the Latrobe Valley have met the needs of the large workforce once needed to bring power to Victoria. During the early years of mining, an unplanned tent town known simply as 'Brown Coal Mine', grew up in the vacinity of the first discovery. It was not until 1947 that the Brown Coal Mine was renamed to Yallourn North and a well set-out township grew. Moe and Morwell were early Gippsland farming towns which progressively transformed themselves to support the evolving new industry. For much of this century, Moe was the major commercial service centre to the coal industry, although that distinction has been shared with Traralgon since the opening of Loy Yang A and B during the mid 1980s and 90s. Coal mining began in Morwell in 1955. The latest town Churchill, was established in the 1960s as a dormitory town for the burgeoning industry.

Map of the Power Trail