AFL football, cricket, soccer, tennis, netball gymnastics, and lawn bowls as well as a heated indoor pool. The popular golf course is located within the township and regularly features as one of the top 100 public access courses in Australia. The Gisborne Soccer Club captain is ex-Socceroo and Melbourne Victory captain Carl Valeri. A number of media reports have made reference to the influx of young professionals, artists and 'hipsters' to the region, drawn by the region's natural beauty, proximity to Melbourne and access to city-style cafes and restaurants. The large numbers of new residents is making the local population growth rate among the fastest in regional Victoria. Locals, worried about the environmental and cultural impacts of this growing popularity, successfully campaigned for new planning controls to protect the character of the region. Population In the 2016 census, Gisborne had a population count of 9,822 people. At the time, 82.1% of the town's residents were born in Australia, with the most common foreign countries of birth being England (4.0%) and New Zealand (1.3%). The most common responses for religion were "No Religion" (35.3%), Catholic (28.3%) and Anglican (13.0%). Public Transport The town's railway station is on the Bendigo Line, serviced by V/Line. Trains take 20 minutes between Gisborne and Sunbury, where customers can connect directly to Metro services; otherwise, V/Line can take customers directly into Melbourne's CBD, terminating at Southern Cross Station. When the railway line was being built, it was too difficult to get the trains down into Gisborne's township due to terrain, so instead the Gisborne railway station was built just outside the township, forming the new suburb of New Gisborne. The town has its own dedicated bus service called GisBus, which runs looped shuttle services around the township, as well as on-demand pick-up and drop-off services connecting townsfolk to the railway station, as part of PTV. Media The town receives all of Melbourne's metropolitan digital television channels, including Channel 31. The town also receives television from Mount Alexander but signals from Melbourne are much stronger. The town is largely serviced by major publication newspapers such as The Age, but Gisborne also receives free weekly regional news from the Midland Express, as well as a monthly Gisborne-dedicated publication, the GREAT Gisborne Gazette. Gisborne features as a backdrop for several films and television series, including Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King. In 2022, Gisborne South was