Albury

The explorers Hume and Hovell arrived at what their maps called 'Crossing Point', but is now known as the Murray River at Albury, on 16 November 1824. They named the river the Hume River, after Hume's father, and the next day inscribed a tree by the river bank before continuing their journey south to Westernport in Victoria. In 1830, explorer Captain Charles Sturt discovered the Hume River downstream at its junction with the Murrumbidgee River. Not realising it was the same river, he named it the Murray River.[5] Both names persisted for some time, Hume falling into disuse eventually in favour of Murray. The Aboriginal name for the river was Millewa. A crossing place for the Murray became popular close to where Hovell inscribed the tree. In summer it was usually possible to cross the river by foot.

Among the first squatters to follow in the steps of the explorers and settle in the district were William Wyse and Charles Ebden.

The first European buildings erected at the crossing place were a provisions store and some small huts. A survey for a town was commissioned in 1838 by Assistant Surveyor Thomas Townsend who mapped out Wodonga Place (the present Wodonga Place) as the western boundary, Hume Street as the northern boundary, Kiewa Street to the east and Nurigong Street to the south, with Townsend Street being the only other north–south road, and Ebden and Hovell Streets being the two other east–west roads. Townsend proposed the settlement be named 'Bungambrawatha ', the Aboriginal name for the area, but when his plan was eventually approved and published in the Government Gazette on 13 April 1839 the name had been changed to Albury.[6][7]

Albury is said to be named after a village in Kent, England which it apparently resembled,[8] though that referenced publication seems incorrect since there is no Albury in Kent. More plausible is Albury in adjacent Surrey, straddling the Tillingbourne river and a significant 18th century site of mills and industry.[9]

The historic Albury Court House was completed in 1860

By 1847 the Albury settlement included two public houses and a handful of huts, a police barracks and a blacksmiths. A log punt established in 1844 serviced the crossing of the Murray River. Albury Post Office opened on 1 April 1843, closed in 1845, then reopened in the township on 1 February 1847.[10]

In 1851, with the separation of Victoria from New South Wales, and the border falling on the Murray River, Albury found itself a frontier town. With an increase in commerce with Melbourne, the first bridge was built in 1860 to the design of surveyor William Snell Chauncy.[11] Albury at this time became a customs post between the two colonies as New South Wales held a protectionist stance after gaining its constitution in 1856.

Albury was at this time starting to grow substantially with German speaking immigrants using the area to grow grapes for wine. By the 1870s a butter factory was established, flour mill, wineries and locally brewed cider and soft drinks were available.

Birds-eye view of Albury, New South Wales, 1881, by Gibbs, Shallard, & Co.

The railway line from Sydney arrived at Albury in 1881 (see Transport-Rail below). A temporary wooden railway bridge joined the line to the Victorian network in 1883. New South Wales and Victoria had different track gauges until 1962, when the first train ran direct from Sydney to Melbourne. The two states could not initially agree which should be the transfer point so they had an expensive and attractive iron lattice bridge sent from Scotland which accommodated both gauges.

In 1888, Albury built its first school house. The city's first mayor, James Fallon, was an innovator of the Public School, funding a demonstration High School to be built on Kiewa Street. Albury High School opened in Kiewa Street in 1927.

Overlooking Albury from Monument Hill in the 1920s

The Royal Commission on Sites for the Seat of Government of the Commonwealth report of 1903 recommended Albury (along with Tumut) as the preferred candidate for the national capital,[12] though the proposal met staunch opposition from residents.[13] At a public meeting, just one member of parliament voted in favour of Albury – Isaac Isaacs, member for Indi. The lack of support for other places ultimately led to the selection of Canberra as the preferred site.[13][14]

The Uiver being pulled out of the mud after its emergency landing in Albury in 1934

In 1934, a Douglas DC-2 airliner of KLM (the "Uiver"), a competitor in the MacRobertson Trophy Air Race (also known as the London to Melbourne Air Race), made an emergency night landing at the town's racecourse after becoming lost during severe thunderstorms. After signalling by Morse code A-L-B-U-R-Y to the lost aircrew by using the entire town's public lighting system, the "Uiver" was guided in to land safely. The makeshift runway at the racecourse was illuminated by the headlights of cars belonging to local residents who had responded to a special news bulletin on ABC radio station 2CO. After refuelling the next day, many local volunteers helped pull the stranded aircraft out of the mud and the aircraft was able to take off and continue to Melbourne where it won first prize in the race's handicap category and was second overall.[15][16]

Albury and Wodonga played a military role in World War II with the establishment of ordnance bases at Bandiana and Bonegilla. Proclaimed a city in 1946, Albury played a role in the post-war immigration to Australia with the establishment nearby of Australia's first migrant centre, the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre in 1947.

Albury's proximity to Wodonga has spurred several efforts to achieve some kind of municipal governmental union (see Albury-Wodonga). In 1973, Albury-Wodonga was selected as the primary focus of the Whitlam federal government's scheme to redirect the uncontrolled growth of Australia's large coastal cities (Sydney and Melbourne in particular) by encouraging decentralisation. Grand plans were made to turn Albury-Wodonga into a major inland city and large areas of the surrounding farmland were compulsorily purchased by the government. Some industries were enticed to move there, and a certain amount of population movement resulted. However, the current urban population is approximately 92,200.[2]

St Matthew's Anglican Church

The Albury Botanic Gardens in autumn

Albury has a warm, temperate climate, with cool, damp winters and very warm to hot, mostly dry, summers.[18] Under the Köppen climate classification, Albury has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa), but would have tendencies of a Mediterranean climate (Csa) as well.[19]

In summer, the mean daily maximum temperature is 30 °C (86 °F) with low humidity; however, this is subject to substantial daily variation. An average of 17 days with a maximum above 35 °C (95 °F) occur in this summer period. Mean winter maxima are 12 °C (54 °F) with many cloudy days, and is likewise the wettest season. Albury gets approximately 20 days per year featuring minimums of below freezing, although the high cloud cover tends to limit frost.[20] Sleet occurs during the winter months, but settling snowfalls are rare. The highest temperature recorded at Albury was 46.1 °C on 4 January 2020, and the lowest temperature was −4.0 °C recorded on 8 August 1994 (both at the Airport AWS station).[18]

Albury's mean annual rainfall is 694.9 millimetres (27.36 in), which is more than Melbourne but less than Sydney. Rain is plentiful all year round, but most of it falls in the winter months with August's high mean of 72.9 mm (2.87 in) comparing with the February low of 45.1 mm (1.78 in). Albury has quite a high evaporation rate in summer, giving the environment a more arid look compared to drier cities like Melbourne (although Albury in winter has a much greener look). The city enjoys a high amount of sunshine, getting around 108 days of clear skies annually (with the vast majority in summer and autumn)—The sunniest month is January, with 14.6 clear days (and 7.7 cloudy days); and the cloudiest month is July, with 17.5 cloudy days (and only 3.9 clear days).[18]

Hume dam, with eight spillway gates open

Lake Hume is situated on the Murray River 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) upstream of Albury. The Hume Dam (colloquially termed the Weir locally) wall construction took 17 years, from 1919 to 1936. A hydro-electric power plant supplies 60 MW of power to the state grid. When full, the lake covers 80 square kilometres (31 sq mi).

Lake Hume from the air in Summer

The lake was created for irrigation purposes and has caused significant changes to the flow patterns and ecology of the Murray River. Before the construction of the Hume Weir, flows in normal (non-drought) years were low in summer and autumn (though still significant overall), rising in winter due to seasonal rainfall and reaching a flood-peak in late spring due to snow-melt in the Murray and its tributaries' alpine headwaters. The flow is now effectively reversed, with low flows in winter and sustained, relatively high flows in late spring, summer and early autumn to meet irrigation demands, although the spring flood peak has been virtually eliminated. The water released from the base of the Hume Weir is unnaturally cold, at least 10 °C (18 °F) colder than it naturally should be.[32] This flow reversal, temperature depression, and removal of the spring flood peak, has led to the drying out and loss of many billabongs and has harmed the populations of native fish of the Murray River such as the iconic Murray Cod.[33][34]

Several threatened species can be found in Albury, including the Sloane's froglet, Regent Honeyeater, and Squirrel Glider (Petaurus norfolcensis).[35][36]

Hume Highway internal bypass running beside Albury railway station

Situated on the old Hume Highway, Albury is a major transit point for interstate commerce. In March 2007, Albury was bypassed by a new section of the Hume Freeway. The new freeway includes the new Spirit of Progress Bridge over the Murray River and cost $518 million, the most expensive road project ever built in regional Australia at that time.[37]

The other minor highways which connect to Albury are the Riverina Highway, which continues west through Berrigan to Deniliquin and east to Lake Hume; and the Olympic Highway which diverges left from the Hume 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) north of Albury, into the centre of NSW, passing through Wagga Wagga and terminating with the Mid-Western Highway at Cowra.

In 1888, the Smollett Street wrought iron arch bridge was constructed over Bungambrawatha Creek. Smollet Street was extended westward through the botanical gardens to give direct access from Albury railway station to Howlong Road by a straight street. The bridge is near the botanic gardens and the local swimming pool. The bridge is a rare example of a metal arch bridge in New South Wales, and is the oldest of only two such bridges in New South Wales, the other being the Sydney Harbour Bridge.[38]

Albury railway station, built in 1881 in the Victorian Italianate style

Albury railway station is on the main Sydney-Melbourne railway line. Originally, New South Wales and Victoria had different track gauges, which meant that all travellers in either direction had to change trains at Albury. To accommodate this, a very long railway platform was needed; the 450-metre (1,480 ft) long covered platform is one of the longest in Australia.[39] The broad gauge section of track between Seymour and Albury has now been converted to standard gauge; there is no longer a break-of-gauge at Albury station. The station is served by a three daily V/Line train services from Melbourne (terminating at Albury) and the NSW TrainLink Melbourne-Sydney XPT service, which runs twice daily in each direction. In 1873, the 5-foot-3-inch (1.60 m) broad gauge railway line from Melbourne reached the township of Belvoir/Wodonga. In 1881, the New South Wales 4-foot-8.5-inch (1.435 m) standard gauge railway line reached Albury, with a railway bridge joining the two colonies in 1883. Albury became the stop over, where passengers on the Melbourne-Sydney journey changed trains until 1962, when a standard gauge track was opened between the two capitals. After World War II, in an attempt to overcome the difference in gauges and speed up traffic, a bogie exchange device lifted freight wagons and carriages allowing workers to refit rolling stock with different gauged wheel-sets.

The break of railway gauge at Albury was a major impediment to Australia's war effort and infrastructure during both World Wars, as every soldier, every item of equipment, and all supplies had to be off-loaded from the broad gauge and reloaded onto a standard gauge railway wagon on the opposite side of the platform. In his book Tramps Abroad, writer Mark Twain in 1895 wrote of the break of gauge at Albury and changing trains: ""Now comes a singular thing, the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the most unaccountable marvel that Australia can show. At the frontier between NSW and Victoria our multitude of passengers were routed out of their snug beds by lantern light in the morning in the biting cold to change cars. Think of the paralysis of intellect that gave that idea birth, imagine the boulder it emerged from, on some petrified legislator's shoulders."[40]

During World War II military armouries and warehouses were established in the vicinity of Albury at Bonegilla, Wirlinga and Bandiana. Similar stores were also established at Tocumwal and Oaklands. The conversion of the broad gauge track to a second standard gauge track, between Seymour and Albury, was substantially completed in 2011. The railway station and its associated yards are listed on both the Australian National Heritage List and the New South Wales State Heritage Register.[41][42]

Albury Airport terminal

Albury Airport, owned and operated by the City of Albury, is the second busiest regional airport in New South Wales with around 280,000 passenger movements per year. The airport, 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) east of the city centre, has scheduled daily flights to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane through commercial carriers. The road leading from Albury Airport to the city was renamed Borella Road in 1979, in honour of Victoria Cross recipient Albert Chalmers Borella, who was buried at Albury.[43]

Local public transport is provided exclusively by private bus operators, Martin's Albury and Dysons who run day time bus services. The overwhelming majority of local transport is by private car, however traffic is generally moderate. The opening of the Hume Freeway bypass on 4 March 2007,[44] has greatly eased previous traffic congestion on the Lincoln Causeway, allowing vastly better flow between Albury and Wodonga.

There is a good network of bicycle paths in the city, including one to the outlying suburb of Thurgoona and across the state border to Wodonga. A new program has built many more bike tracks, including one from the riverside parks to Wonga Wetlands.[45]

The region surrounding Albury provides a variety of tourist attractions, including the wine region centred on Rutherglen, the historic goldfield towns of Beechworth and Yackandandah, boating, fishing and canoe hire on the many rivers and lakes, including Lake Hume, the forests and mountains of the Great Dividing Range and slightly further afield the snowfields Falls Creek and Mount Hotham.

Within the city of Albury itself, Monument Hill, at the western end of the CBD is the location of the city's distinctive First World War Memorial and provides a good view of the city. Wonga Wetlands, 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) west of the city and adjacent to the River Murray is a key feature of Albury's use of treated wastewater and consists of a series of lagoons and billabongs. Wonga Wetlands boasts more than 150 species of birdlife and is home to the Aquatic Environment Education Centre.

The Hume and Hovell Walking Track, that begins in Yass and follows the route of explorers Hamilton Hume and William Hovell on their 1824 expedition to Port Phillip, ends at the Hovell Tree in South Albury.[47]

Albury High School

Albury is home to one of the campuses of Charles Sturt University. The original Albury campus was located in the northern part of the CBD between Kiewa and David streets. Charles Sturt University relocated to a new purpose built campus at Thurgoona in 2009. CSU offers courses in Arts, Business, Education and Science.

The Albury-Wodonga campus of La Trobe University is also a large and growing educational institution with several thousand undergraduates and postgraduates in its two colleges. Degrees in Business, Arts, Science, Bioscience, Nursing, and various Allied Health disciplines, are available.

Albury Library Museum

Riverina Institute of TAFE operates a campus in Albury. There is also a campus of the UNSW Rural Clinical School of Medicine adjacent to the Albury Base Hospital.

Albury is home to nine public primary schools (Albury Public School, Albury North Public School, Albury West Public School, Glenroy Public School, Hume Public School, Lavington Public School, Lavington East Public School, Springdale Heights Public School, and Thurgoona Public School) and three public high schools (Albury High School, James Fallon High School and Murray High School). Several non-government high schools operate in the area including Trinity Anglican College, Xavier High School, The Scots School Albury, Border Christian College, Aspect Riverina school,[48] and St Paul's College. The city is the base for NSW Department of Education South West Riverina regional office.

Albury serves as a regional media centre. A daily tabloid owned by Nine Entertainment, The Border Mail, is printed in, and has offices in, Wodonga.

There was a free monthly independent community newspaper, The Situation, which launched in Albury-Wodonga in 2013. Later it expanded into other Victorian communities in the north and north-east such as Benalla, Echuca-Moama, Seymour, Shepparton and Wangaratta. It shut down in 2019.

Albury has access to all major TV networks, with channels available including 7 Regional (an owned and operated station of the Seven Network), WIN Television (an affiliate of the Nine Network), Southern Cross Austereo (an affiliate of the Ten Network), as well as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Special Broadcasting Service, more commonly known as SBS.

Of the three main commercial networks, 7 Regional airs a half-hour local news bulletin at 6 pm each weeknight, produced from a newsroom in the city but broadcast from studios in Canberra.[52]

Southern Cross Ten airs the Victorian edition of 10 News First from Melbourne each weeknight at 5 pm, featuring opt-outs for Albury-Wodonga, Echuca-Moama, Shepparton, Wangaratta, Border, Goulburn Valley, North and North East.

WIN Television broadcasts a half-hour state-wide regional WIN News bulletin each weeknight at 5:30 pm, produced from studios in Wollongong. Previously a local edition was produced by WIN until the closure of its Albury newsroom in June 2019.[53][54]

On 5 May 2011, analogue television transmissions ceased in most areas of regional Victoria and some border regions including Albury-Wodonga.[55] All local free-to-air television services are now broadcasting in digital transmission only. This was done as part of the Federal Government's plan for Digital terrestrial television in Australia where all analogue transmission systems are gradually turned off and replaced with modern DVB-T transmission systems.

The 2AY and Edge FM studios

There are three commercial radio stations in Albury – 2AY on 1494 AM, Triple M The Border on 105.7 FM and Hit The Border on 104.9 FM. Hit 104.9 The Border's south eastern network is programmed out of the Albury/Wodonga Hub, going to centres in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia. Broadcasting out of the same building is Triple M 105.7 The Border, which is also networked to local stations around the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia.

Albury/Wodonga is one radio market, thus advertisements are directed to both sides of the border. The Albury/Wodonga market underwent significant change in 2005 when Macquarie Southern Cross Media bought 105.7 The River from RG Capital, and 2AY and Star FM from DMG Radio Australia. Due to cross-media ownership laws preventing the ownership of more than two stations in one market, Macquarie was required to sell one of these stations and in September 2005 sold 2AY to the Ace Radio network. 2AY takes much of its daytime and evening programming from 3AW in Melbourne. The ABC produces breakfast and morning radio programs through its local radio network, from the studios of ABC Goulburn Murray, 106.5 FM, located in Wodonga. Most of the rest its programming content is delivered from Melbourne. The ABC also has local transmitters for ABC Radio National, 990 AM; ABC News Radio, 100.9 FM; ABC Classic, 104.1 FM and Triple J, 103.3 FM

There is also a community radio station known as 2REM 107.3 FM. The Albury Wodonga Community Radio station broadcasts a large number of speciality programs including those for the retiree, racing enthusiast, ethnic and Aboriginal communities and a range of musical styles including underground and independent artists from 8:00 pm onwards.

In addition, the area is serviced by Vision Australia Radio 101.7 FM, a Radio for the Print Handicapped station, Wodonga TAFE's broadcasting training station, 88.4 Wodonga Community Radio. Albury-Wodonga Christian Broadcasters transmits as 98.5 The Light and the dance music station Raw FM airs on 87.6 MHz.