Albury–Wodonga

Population: 101,793 (2023 estimate)

Area: 285 square miles (739 square kilometers)

Founded: 1838 for Albury; 1851 for Wodonga

Albury-Wodonga is an urban area in southeastern Australia that is comprised of the twin cities of Albury, New South Wales, and Wodonga, Victoria. The cities were founded in the mid-nineteenth century as a single entity, but became separated as the result of a government error when the state of Victoria was created. Like most of the inland cities of Australia, the Albury-Wodonga area developed and grew as a farming and cattle region. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the area also became a manufacturing and transportation hub. In the 1970s, city leaders and the respective state governments of New South Wales and Victoria undertook an effort to develop the cities into a major inland urban center. Although the plan was ultimately scaled back, the Albury-Wodonga area grew to become one of the twenty largest urban centers in the nation.

Landscape

The city of Albury is located on the southern border of New South Wales, while Wodonga is on the northern border of Victoria. The two cities are separated by the Murray River, which runs through southeastern Australia and is the nation’s longest river at 1,558 miles (2,508 kilometers). Albury-Wodonga is about 186 miles (300 kilometers) northeast of Melbourne and 354 miles (570 kilometers) southwest of Sydney—Australia’s two largest cities. Albury-Wodonga sits near the foothills of the Great Dividing Range, a mountain range that runs for about 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers) north-to-south along eastern Australia. As a result, the geography surrounding the twin cities can vary from fertile valleys and snowcapped mountains in the east to flat pastureland in the west.

The Albury-Wodonga region has a mild, generally temperate climate, with higher-than-average amounts of rainfall. The two cities each compile their own meteorological data, which differ only slightly. The region has an average yearly temperature of 59.2 degrees Fahrenheit (15.1 degrees Celsius) and receives about 29.3 inches (744 millimeters) of rain annually. In a strange quirk, January is the warmest month in Albury with average temperatures of 73 Fahrenheit (22.8 Celsius); Wodonga’s warmest month is February, which also averages 73 Fahrenheit (22.8 Celsius). July is the coldest month in both cities, with average temperatures of about 45.4 Fahrenheit (7.4 Celsius). The wettest month in each city sees 3.7 inches (94 millimeters) of rainfall, but Albury experiences that amount in August, while Wodonga sees it in July.

People

According to the 2021 census administered by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the city of Albury had a population of 56,093, while Wodonga’s population was 43,253; combined the Albury-Wodonga urban area had a population of 97,793. That ranked Albury-Wodonga as the twentieth-largest population center in the nation.

Specific demographic statistics were last compiled during Australia’s 2021 census. Those figures showed that 39.9 percent of Albury-Wodonga’s population claimed Australian ancestry, while 39.7 percent claimed English ancestry. Another 12.5 percent identified as Irish, 10.6 percent as Scottish, and 7.2 percent as German. Smaller percentages of respondents reported Italian, Dutch, Indian, Chinese, or Filipino ancestry. Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Island peoples made up 3.7 percent of the cities’ population.

About 41.5 percent of the cities' population claimed no religious affiliation at all in the 2021 census, while another 6.4 percent did not state a religious affiliation or lack of affiliation. Catholics accounted for the largest religious affiliation at 21.4 percent. Another 12.1 percent were Anglican, and 3.1 percent were members of the Uniting Church in Australia. An almost equal number of households were composed of couples without children (40.4 percent) and couples with children (39.1 percent), while 19.0 percent were one-parent families.

Economy

The earliest settlers to the Albury-Wodonga region were mainly farmers and herders who found large expanses of grazing land for cattle and sheep. During the nineteenth century, the cities’ location along a major travel route from Sydney to Melbourne aided its growth into a thriving railway and transportation hub. Local farmers used the transport network as a means to distribute their produce, dairy products, wool, and livestock to other regions of the country. In the twentieth century, the region’s economy diversified with the addition of auto plants, steel works, and textile and paper mills. In the 1970s, the government tried to attract more administrative and professional jobs to the area, increasing the number of people employed in those fields.

By 2019, the Albury-Wodonga gross regional product (GRP) was reported as $7.5 billion. In 2021, an estimated 61.3 percent of people aged fifteen years and older in the twin cities were in the labor force, with 56.9 percent working full-time and 32.8 percent part-time. Some 18.8 percent of the population worked in the professional fields, and 15.2 percent were employed as technicians or trade workers. Community and personal service workers (14.2 percent) and clerical and administrative workers (12.0 percent) made up a significant amount of the workforce, as did managers (11.2 percent), general laborers (10.5 percent), and sales workers (9.3 percent). More people—8.2 percent—worked in the health care and social assistance industries than in any other field.

Landmarks

One of the twin cities’ primary attractions is the Albury Botanic Gardens, a 9.9-acre (4-hectare) free public space that was first opened in 1877. The gardens contain more than one thousand plant species, including several transplanted from the country’s tropical rainforests. The gardens have garnered many accolades over the years and are considered to be one of the best botanical gardens in all of Australia. Located near the botanical gardens is a unique local landmark known as the Hovell Tree. The tree was marked with an ax by Captain William Hovell as he explored the area in 1824. Another nearby tree was marked by fellow explorer Hamilton Hume. The trees became popular guideposts for travelers looking to cross the Murray River. Hume’s tree was destroyed by fire in the 1840s, but the Hovell Tree remains standing. Hovell’s original marking has long since faded, but a bronze plaque on the tree commemorates the event.

The Albury Railway Station, originally constructed in 1881, is one of the most distinctive nineteenth-century rural rail stations in the country. The building features Italian Renaissance-style architecture and a 72-foot (22-meter) tall clock tower. Another significant local architectural landmark is the Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Building, which was built in 1925 and features a five-story clock tower.

The Murray Art Museum Albury was built in 1907 in the style of a turn-of-the-century Edwardian British Town Hall. The museum has numerous exhibits focusing on local history, including displays of Aboriginal art and an exhibit showcasing the history of the Flying Fruit Fly Circus, a youth circus troupe based in Albury. About 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) east of the cities lies the Hume Dam, which was built between 1919 and 1936. The dam was once the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and created Hume Lake, a popular recreational area with tourists and local travelers. On an unusual note, Henri’s Wodonga Bakery is home to the world’s largest rolling pin, a two-ton, 46-foot- (14-meter-) long pin that sits atop the store’s roof. The attraction has been recognized by Guinness World Records.

History

Although archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation in the Albury-Wodonga region dating back thousands of years, annual flooding of the Murray River made permanent settlement difficult. The Wiradjuri people are believed to have migrated to the region in the years before European settlers arrived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Wiradjuri named the area Bungambrawatha, which simply means “homeland,” and called the river Millewa.

Although the Dutch were the first Europeans to land in Australia in the seventeenth century, the British claimed the land in 1770 and were the first to colonize it in 1788. The original British settlements were near the coast, but by the early nineteenth century, explorers had journeyed inland to chart out new territories. In 1824, William Hovell and Hamilton Hume arrived at the Murray River and marked the area on a pair of trees. Within a few years, herders began moving into the region and used Hovell and Hume’s carvings to locate the river crossing. In 1836, a settler named Robert Brown built a hut that doubled as a general store near the crossing, and within two years, the New South Wales government established a township at the site. The township was originally to have been named Bungambrawatha, but the government replaced that name in 1839 with Albury after a town in England.

From the start, the settlers and the local Wiradjuri people fought over the land. Eventually, the settlers prevailed and the Wiradjuri migrated elsewhere to find new hunting grounds. As the Albury region and the country of Australia grew, the government began to expand its colonial reach. In 1851, it designated the southern region of New South Wales as the new state of Victoria. The dividing line was to have been the Murrumbidgee River, which is located far north of Albury. However, because of a clerical error, the line was accidentally set as the Murray River, suddenly placing the opposite sides of Albury in different states.

The settlement on the Victoria side of the river was named Wodonga after the Aboriginal word for “bulrushes.” The Australian government changed the name to Belvoir; however, both names continued to be used for the town, and within two decades, Belvoir fell out of favor and Wodonga was officially adopted. When gold was discovered in Victoria during the 1850s, Albury-Wodonga became a thriving river port. The region continued to grow in the 1870s with the arrival of the first railway lines in the area. One of the nation’s main rail arteries from Sydney to Melbourne was built through Albury-Wodonga.

The region remained a primary agricultural and transportation hub into the twentieth century. Albury was officially granted city status in 1946, while Wodonga was named Australia’s first “rural city” in 1973. The region’s centralized location was used during World War II (1939–1945) by the Australian military, which established an Army training center in the Bonegilla section of Wodonga. After the war, the center was used as a migrant camp for hundreds of thousands of immigrants. An estimated 320,000 people passed through the camp in its two decades of operation.

For much of their existence, the cities faced a unique problem; although they were next to each other and their local governments worked together, their respective state governments were hundreds of miles apart. As a result, the Australian government discussed several ideas to merge the cities or incorporate one of them into the adjoining state.

In the early 1970s, the Australian government began an effort to decentralize and ease the population burden in its larger coastal cities. Albury-Wodonga was viewed as a prime candidate to become a major inland population center. The federal and state governments declared the cities a national growth center with the goal of increasing their population to near 300,000. The governments allocated millions of dollars to promote migration and the movement of administrative and professional jobs to the region. The effort was eventually abandoned before the cities could achieve the goal, but not before the Albury-Wodonga area became one of the more populous inland areas in the nation.

Bibliography

“Aboriginal Heritage.” AlburyWodongaAustralia.com, 2006–2023, www.alburywodongaaustralia.com.au/info/aboriginal-heritage/. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.

“Albury - Wodonga: 2021 Census All Persons QuickStats.” Australian Bureau of Statistics, Govt. of Australia, abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2021/1001. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.

“Albury Wodonga History at a Glance.” AlburyWodongaAustralia.com, 2006–2023, www.alburywodongaaustralia.com.au/info/history/. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.

“Albury, NSW.” Aussie Towns, 2021, www.aussietowns.com.au/town/albury-nsw. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.

“Albury Climate.” Climate-Data.org, en.climate-data.org/oceania/australia/new-south-wales/albury-764102/. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.

“History.” Albury-Wodonga.com, www.albury-wodonga.com/docs/history.htm. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.

Pennay, Bruce. Making a City in the Country. U of New South Wales P, 2005.

Wodongoa, Victoria. "World's B iggest Grass-Court Event a Hit in Albury-Wodonga." Tennis.com, 15 Feb. 2024, www.tennis.com.au/news/2024/02/15/worlds-biggest-grass-court-event-a-hit-in-albury-wodonga. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.