PRESTON

Preston is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 9 km  north-east of Melbourne's central business district, located within the City of Darebin local government area. Preston recorded a population of 33,790 at the 2021 census.

As part of the City of Darebin, Preston has an active and eclectic artists and DIY community which is contemporary, experimental, and culturally diverse. Writers, musicians, and visual artists flock to the locality for performance, collaboration, and acceptance. Notable contributors to the Darebin arts community are locals Saint Jude, Downhills Home, The Contrast, The Melbourne Ukulele Kollective, Performing Older Women's Circus (POW Circus), Darebin City Brass, and members of Little John, to name a few.

Darebin celebrates the artistry and diversity of the community with regular festivals and events such as the Darebin Music Feast and the now-defunct High Vibes Festival. The major community Indigenous Radio Station 3KND is located in Mary Street in Preston and is completely Aboriginal managed.

Preston has a wide variety of restaurants, including fine dining and fast food. High Street has been transformed lately, with many new cafes and restaurants opening and becoming popular with the youth in the area. Niche cafés and restaurants have opened in the suburb inviting patrons to dine.

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme

SOUTHBANK

Southbank is is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 1km south from Melbourne's Central Business District. It is nowadays dominated by high-rise development, although it was a former industrial area. It is one of the primary business centres in Greater Melbourne, being the headquarters of Foster's, Treasury Wine Estates, Crown Limited, Alumina, Incitec Pivot, The Herald and Weekly Times (including the Herald Sun), as well as regional offices of many major corporations, in a cluster of towers with over 340,000 square metres of office space in 2008.

Southbank is also one of the most densely populated areas of Melbourne, with a large cluster of apartment towers, including Australia's tallest tower measured to its highest floor, the Eureka Tower. Southbank Promenade and Southgate Arts and Leisure Precinct, on the southern bank of the Yarra River, extending to Crown Casino, is one of Melbourne's major entertainment precincts.

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme

GIPPSLAND PASTORAL

Gippsland is a rural region that makes up the southeastern part of Victoria, Australia, mostly comprising the coastal plains to the rainward (southern) side of the Victorian Alps (the southernmost section of the Great Dividing Range). It covers an elongated area of 41,556 km2 located further east of the Shire of Cardinia (Melbourne's outermost southeastern suburbs) between Dandenong Ranges and Mornington Peninsula, and is bounded to the north by the mountain ranges and plateaus/highlands of the High Country (which separate it from Hume region in Victoria's northeast), to the southwest by the Western Port Bay, to the south and east by the Bass Strait and the Tasman Sea, and to the east and northeast by the Black-Allan Line (the easternmost section of the Victoria/New South Wales state border).

The Gippsland region is generally divided by the Strzelecki Ranges and tributaries of the Gippsland Lakes into five statistical sub-regions — namely the West Gippsland, South Gippsland, Latrobe Valley, Central Gippsland and East Gippsland. As at the 2016 Australian census, Gippsland had a population of 271,266, with the principal population centres of the region, in descending order of population, Traralgon, Warragul, Drouin, Bairnsdale, Moe, Sale, Morwell, Wonthaggi, Leongatha, and Phillip Island. Gippsland is best known for its primary production such as mining, power generation and farming as well as its tourist destinations — Phillip Island, Wilsons Promontory, the Gippsland Lakes, Walhalla, the Baw Baw Plateau, and the Strzelecki Ranges.

It is a convenient region close to Melbourne for a day-trip, but not only. There are many attractive spots to see and many wonderful small towns to see and spots of  historical interest to visit.

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Blue Monday meme.