Location : South Eastern Mainland Australia

Capital City : Melbourne.

Size : 227,600 Square Kilometres (87,876 Square Miles)  Second smallest State. (Not including Northern Territory)

Length Of Coastline : 1,800 Kilometres (1,119 Miles)

Highest Point : Mount Bogong (1,986 Metres or 6,516 Feet)

Average Annual Temperatures - Melbourne :

January Maximum - 25.8 Degrees Celsius or 78.4 Degrees Fahrenheit.
July Maximum - 13.3 Degrees Celsius or 55.9 Degrees Fahrenheit.

Average Annual Rainfall - Melbourne : 658 Millimetres or 26.32 Inches.

Melbourne is Australia's second largest city and is a very busy port for incoming and outgoing goods.  A strange claim to fame for Melbourne is that it has the largest population of people of Greek heritage outside the Greek capital of Athens.   A lot of Australia's major businesses have their headquarters in Melbourne, although it is not the financial capital of Australia it once was as companies move to other cities or even offshore to other countries.  Melbourne was also the host city of first Olympic Games in the Southern Hemisphere in 1956.

Much of Victoria is farmland, although there are large deposits of brown coal in the south east area, and that is utilised to produce power.  Victoria was the scene of Australia's first gold rushes, but the gold mining has basically petered out and very little mining is done today.  Victoria is becoming more famous for its vineyards and wine, than it was in the past, but the most important rural produce is sheep farming.

As with many parts of Australia, tourism is also becoming more popular and Victoria shares Australia's snowfields with New South Wales.

Victoria is also home to Australia's unique form of football known as "Australian Rules Football", although it is a national competition, most teams are based in Melbourne.  There is a lot of friendly rivalry between Victorians and people from New South Wales and Queensland where "Rugby League" is the preferred code of football.  If you have never seen an "Australian Rules Football" match, you would probably find it difficult to follow, but it is played at a very fast pace, and the players are extremely athletic.  If you ever visit Australia, it would be worthwhile spending an afternoon at the "Foodie"  (Footie - slang for Football)

In the past few years many Victorians have moved North to Queensland or Northern New South Wales, and in the general tradition of Australians to adopt a terminology for a particular group, they have become known as "Mexicans" - because they come from South of the border.