The Victorian government's Wimmera Southern Mallee subregion is part of the Grampians region in western Victoria. It includes most of what is considered the Wimmera, and part of the southern Mallee region. The subregion is based on the social catchment of Horsham, its main settlement.
The Wimmera district covers the dryland farming area south of the range of Mallee scrub, east of the South Australia border and north of the Great Dividing Range.
Most of the Wimmera is very flat, with only the Grampians and Mount Arapiles rising above vast plains and the low plateaux that form the Great Divide in this part of Victoria. The Grampians are very rugged and tilted, with many sheer sandstone cliffs on their eastern sides, but gentle slopes on the west.
The Wimmera does not include the southern Mallee area in the north part of the Shire of Yarriambiack (around Hopetoun). It does include the southern part of the Shire of Buloke, which is not part of the Victorian government's aforementioned subregion (around Wycheproof, Birchip, Donald and Charlton). This latter area, plus the St Arnaud area, makes up the East Wimmera region.
In the context of the Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia, the Wimmera is a sub-region of located within the Murray Darling Depression bioregion.
The Wimmera is one of the nine districts in Victoria used for weather forecasting by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
The Victorian Department of Environment and Primary Industries defines the Wimmera as a region for agricultural production purposes encompassing the Buloke, Hindmarsh, Horsham City, Northern Grampians, West Wimmera and Yarriambiack local government areas.
The Victorian Government's Wimmera Catchment Management Authority serves the catchment of the Wimmera River, and that of the Yarriambiack Creek south of the Mallee.
The Shire of Wimmera originally covered a large part of the Wimmera and southern Mallee, but retracted over time to cover only land near Horsham. It was later abolished, with most of it becoming part of the Rural City of Horsham.
The federal government Division of Wimmera originally covered roughly the same area as the Division of Mallee does today, but ended its life covering only the Wimmera area.
At the , the six local government areas (LGAs) that are thought to comprise the Wimmera had a combined population of . The area of these same six LGAs is .
History
The area was inhabited by its Indigenous residents (and continues to be) when it was surveyed by the first European to do so Thomas Mitchell in the mid-1830s, and he is credited with naming the Grampians after a mountain range in his native Scotland, and naming the region as Wimmera, adapting a word from the local indigenous language meaning 'throwing stick'.
Regional development and population
The area contains a number of important towns, such as Horsham, Warracknabeal, Dimboola, Stawell and Nhill. Almost all of these are largely dependent on the grain and sheep industries, and landscape is heavily dominated by flour mills and grain storage silos. The smaller towns in the area are dying due to the declining value of primary products that dominate the region's economy. Similarly, modern farm technology allows individual farmers to stay viable by farming more land, but the decreasing population, and better transport, make smaller service centres less and less viable.
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center;"
|+ Wimmera district LGA populations
|-
! scope="col" rowspan="2" | Local government area
! scope="col" colspan="2" | Area
! scope="col" rowspan="2" | Population<br />()
! scope="col" rowspan="2" | Source(s)
|-
! scope="col" | km<sup>2</sup>
! scope="col" | sq mi
|-
| scope="row" | Shire of Buloke
|
| align="right" |
|
|-
| scope="row" | Shire of Hindmarsh
|
| align="right" |
|
|-
| scope="row" | Rural City of Horsham
|
| align="right" |
|
|-
| scope="row" | Shire of Northern Grampians
|
| align="right" |
|
|-
| scope="row" | Shire of West Wimmera
|
| align="right" |
|
|-
| scope="row" | Shire of Yarriambiack
|
| align="right" |
|
|-
| scope="row" align="right" | Totals
|
| align="right" |
| style="background:darkgrey;" |
|}
: