South Albury, New South Wales

Transcription

Albury-Wodonga is a twin city straddling the Murray River border of the two south-eastern Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria. Albury is the city on the New South Wales bank of the river, Wodonga the Victorian city on the southern bank. For all practical purposes related to travel, the two cities are one. The cities are a gateway to the gourmet area surrounding Beechworth, the mountain town of Bright and the Rutherglen winery area. They also make a good stopping-off point on the drive between Melbourne and Sydney. Whilst in many senses Albury-Wodonga operates as a single community (sometimes to the dismay of residents), the twin cities possess parallel municipal governments and state government services. The closer proximity of Melbourne and the local predominance of Australian Rules Football perhaps give Albury a closer cultural affiliation with Victoria. Grand plans were made by the government 30 years ago to turn Albury-Wodonga into a major inland city and the cities have grown rapidly from sleepy country towns to major regional centres. The Wiradjuri people were probably the tribe of indigenous Australians resident immediately before the advent of Europeans in the area in the 1820s-1830s. European settlement was first gazetted at this popular river crossing in 1839 and after a decade a small settlement was well established. 1851 saw the separation of Victoria from New South Wales as a separate colony with the Murray marking much of the border, and Albury and Wodonga developed as a border town, with customs points between a protectionist Victoria and a free trade favouring New South Wales. A permanent bridge was built over the Murray river in 1860, with horse drawn coach connections running between the train stations in Wodonga and New South Wales, each running trains on different railway gauges. Even after the rail bridge was built, trains from Victoria ran to Albury, and trains from New South Wales ran to Wodonga, as the governments could not agree on a common interchange station. Albury eventually emerged as the choice for interchange, but the railway gauges remained incompatible until the 1960s when the standard gauge track was laid to Melbourne allowing the first trains to run from Sydney to Melbourne without a change in Albury. The size of Albury station still reflects this heritage. Albury was also the focus of attempts to open up the inland trade along the Murray, with paddlesteamers seen as a technology that would open up large tracts of farmland to the market. Although strongly supported by the South Australian government the paddlesteamers were never really a financial success, but the wharves and paddlesteamers in Albury today are at least a tribute to the tenacity of the steamer pioneers.