Sunraysia | |||||||||||||
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 Jack De Garis promoting "Sun-Raysed", a coined word which later generated "Sunraysia".  An image showing the outline of theMallee and Sunraysia district (red circle) which is predominantly contained within theRural City of Mildura. | |||||||||||||
| Country | Australia | ||||||||||||
| State | Australia | ||||||||||||
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Sunraysia is a region located in northwesternVictoria and southwesternNew South Wales inAustralia. The region is renowned for its sunshine, intensivehorticulture including grapes and oranges. Its main centre isMildura, Victoria.
The area of Victoria to the west of Sunraysia is known as theMillewa, the main distinction being that Sunraysia is the irrigated area and the Millewa is the dryland cropping area.
Sunraysia is sometimes incorrectly referred to as aneconomicregion.[1] The area around Mildura, Victoria andWentworth, New South Wales is also known as theMurray outback.[2]
The nameSunraysia derives from a contest that entrepreneurJack De Garis held in 1919, as part of a promotion on behalf of the Australian Dried Fruits Association. The public were invited to submit a name to describe the dried fruits grown in the Mildura area. The winning name wasSun-Raysed, which was modified asSunraysia to describe the district as a whole. In 1920, De Garis started a newspaper in Mildura called theSunraysia Daily, helping to establish the name.[3]
The Greater Sunraysia district forms part of the Fruit Fly Free Exclusion Zone, a Pest Free Area (PFA) that was created in 2007 located between north-west Victoria and south-west New South Wales. It is renowned for the production of high value horticultural crops including citrus, table grapes and stone fruit. The PFA is aligned to this production area to provide greaterfruit fly control measures. TheVictorian Department of Environment and Primary Industries (DEPI) andNew South Wales Department of Primary Industries (DPI) have implemented stringent legislative controls on the movement of host fruit and vegetables into the PFA to keep it free from theQueensland fruit fly (QFF) and maintain high value markets, which are worth millions of dollars to local industries.[4] The PFA enables commercial horticultural products to be marketed without postharvest chemical treatments for QFF. The PFA follows the course of theMurray River fromKerang toWentworth and theDarling River from Wentworth toPooncarie.[5]
In addition to Mildura, the other major settlements in the district areRobinvale,Irymple,Red Cliffs,Merbein, Wentworth,Dareton andBuronga-Gol Gol.
The Mildura campuses ofSunraysia Institute of TAFE (SuniTAFE) andLa Trobe University are located on Benetook Ave between 11th and 14th Streets. SuniTAFE has an additional site in Cardross. The Coomealla Campus ofTAFE NSW is in Dareton.
The main newspaper that services the region is theSunraysia Daily, and is published on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Sunraysia was also serviced by two free papers; theSunraysia Life and theMildura Weekly were published on Fridays. TheMildura Independent was another free weekly, published on Sundays from 1982 to 2007.My Mildura was a free monthly magazine. There are also a number of paid weeklies covering smaller areas within Sunraysia.
Local radio stations includeABC Mildura Swan Hill,RIVER1467 (1467AM 3ML),Triple M 97.9,Hit 99.5, and Hot FM.
Television stations in Sunraysia includeABC Victoria,Channel Nine Mildura (part of the WIN Television network), and7 Mildura.
34°12′22.17″S142°08′08.61″E / 34.2061583°S 142.1357250°E /-34.2061583; 142.1357250
