Albury Wodonga History
BUSHRANGERS, BANKERS, PIONEERS AND POETS
 It took a lot of courage and strength, all sorts of talents, a degree of madness and no small measure of greed to carve a European city life out of an antipodean wilderness. The men and women who came here, from all around the world, brought these attributes with them, wrapped in hope and dreams of glory.
NED KELLY
The end of a criminal career. The beginning of a legend.
Ned Kelly’s armoured shadow looms large across our landscape.
He may not have started his criminal career here but it was in nearby Beechworth that it ended. The Beechworth Gaol was familiar to both Ned and his mother, with both of them serving time within its walls. Kelly also made two appearances at the Beechworth Courthhouse, including his committal hearing for the murders of Constables Lonigan and Scanlon, before being sent to his execution in Melbourne. Visitors to this historic building can actually stand in the very same dock in which Kelly finally faced justice, and sit in the same cell that held him during his trial.
Just north- west of Albury Wodonga is Jerilderie, famed for his impassioned letter, and a real treasure trove of Kelly infamy. Its close proximity makes Albury Wodonga the perfect touring hub to relive this notorious bushranger’s history.
BONEGILLA
A Great Humanitarian Gesture and an Inspired Social Experiment.
Bonegilla, a small rural community just a few miles outside Wodonga, is the site of one of the largest peace time movements of people in the history of the world. Between 1947 and 1971 more than 320,000 predominantly non English speaking immigrants passed through its modest barracks.
These brave people not only changed their own lives for the better,
they changed this country for the better.
Hitler’s war machine had stolen millions of people, from all over Europe, and brought them back to work as slave labourers in German factories and on its farms. When the war ended many of these displaced people were left stranded in camps throughout Germany, unable or too afraid to return to their homelands. Then in 1947 the Australian government agreed to provide these shattered lives with a better future, and accepted people living in these camps into their migration program. Over the next four years 170,000 of them chose to come here under the ‘Displaced Persons’ program.
This act of human caring was also the means by which Australia could also secure its own future, by growing its population rapidly, making itself stronger and safer from the possibilities of some future attack. It also brought with it a tidal wave of new skills and ideas, cultures and cuisines from over 30 different countries, that washed away our isolated, British-orientated view of the world and what it had to offer.
Australia did indeed grow up quickly, and in more ways than it had anticipated. As a result of this remarkable influx of people, who contributed so strongly to the development of our nation, we now enjoy a truly international, multicultural lifestyle.
A Monument To A Million New Lives
Today, over 1.5 million Australians have a direct family or personal connection with this profound place. In honour of them and their families Albury Wodonga has created two Bonegilla Migrant Experience displays.
Block 19 is the remaining section of huts and amenities that made up the original 24 accommodation blocks on the 130 hectare site. They stand as a vivid reminder of what these migrants experienced, and how they lived in their first home in Australia.
A commemorative centre at Block 19, called the ‘Beginning Place,’ pays an emotive tribute to the bravery of these people and provides an insight into the program that brought them here. The Albury Regional Museum is also home to the Bonegilla Collection of photographs, immigration and travel documents, personal effects, written and oral histories that bring to life the human experience within them.
The first of these intrepid visitors were William Hovell and Hamilton Hume. On the 16th of November, 1824, Hume became the first white man to lay eyes on the Murray, and to commemorate the event Hovell named the river after his colleague. Five years later Charles Sturt discovered that this waterway was in fact the upper reaches of an already known and named river, and so the Hume became the Murray. Despite this short-lived naming right, Hume and Hovell’s names remain embedded in the region, and carved in the bark of the Hovell Tree, which still stands on the river bank.
Without roads or police protection it was another twelve years before anyone followed in their footsteps. The first white man to settle here permanently was Robert Brown, who arrived in 1836 with an entrepreneurial spirit to match his survival instincts. He set up a store and established a market garden to cater for those he knew would follow. It didn’t take long. A few months later the first settler farmers and graziers began to arrive, in search of new pastures, squatting on the banks either side of the river. And so a new community began to emerge.
As hard as they worked and as fertile as the soil was, nothing affected the lives and changed the fortunes of the settlers more drastically than the Gold Rush. Perceptions of Australia changed from that of a convict settlement to one of a land of opportunity and wealth creation. It attracted gold diggers of every description, from bankers to bushrangers, all prepared to get rich in the quickest way possible, and Albury Wodonga was right in the middle of it.
The region’s deep and rich settler and colonial history is preserved in its many museums and buildings and precincts.
On the banks of the Murray is the highly regarded Albury Regional Museum, which now calls the Turks Head Hotel home. A short stroll across the bridge separating NSW and Victoria and you find the original Customs buildings, both in near original condition. Then there’s the Burke Museum in Beechworth, itself a museum piece being a perfectly preserved example of Victorian architecture. Nearby, the Beechworth Historic Precinct is a grand collection of civic buildings built on the mountains of gold that passed through them. The Chiltern Museum, Jindera Pioneer Museum and Bandiana Army Museum share their glorious chapters of this country’s story.
The Golden Triangle
Gold was found all over the place, from Ophir to the north and Ballarat to the south, but it was in near Beechworth that the richest alluvial deposits in the country were discovered. At its peak over a billion dollars ( in today’s values ) a year came out of the ground. That was enough money to not only build the finest inland city of its day, it also bought Australia’s independence from Britain.
The gold rush provided Beechworth with a superb architectural legacy, with over 30 of its buildings being heritage listed. Its financial power and location conferred on it the role of administrative centre of regional Australia, and with it came grand civil buildings, court house, banks, library and museum all built from the unique pale granite of the region. They remain in their Victorian beauty to this day, in what is without doubt Australia’s best preserved gold rush town.
The nearby picturesque townships of Yackandandah and Chiltern were also rich gold sites with booming populations. They too have preserved our pioneering past in their colonial architecture and tree-lined streets.
A visit to either town is a journey back to a time when life was simpler and more genteel. Their eclectic collection of Victorian, turn of the century and early Twenties shops, public buildings and homes, is a living time capsule of how we all once were.
Risk Takers And Bookmakers
Pioneering is not for the fainthearted. The people who came here took great personal risks, so it was in their nature to gamble. As early as the 1840s there was a racetrack in town, just to the north of the Hovell Tree. It seems that when the river was too high to cross, delayed travellers were encouraged to pass the time, and share their savings, at regularly held race meetings. The Albury and Wodonga Cups carry on this tradition of the sport of kings in the countryside. The Albury Gold Cup carnival has become a modern sporting phenomenon, regularly attracting upwards of 20,000 funtime and fashion seekers. It’s perhaps regional Australia’s fastest growing event, and earned for itself the title of the region’s Number One Event in 2005.
The Museum Pub
The Albury Regional Museum was originally The Turks Head Hotel, the first pub in Albury. Many a stranger and local stopped here to refresh themselves after a long day’s travel or labour. Today, it serves as a continuing reminder of the many diverse people who have passed through on their way to help build this country, with its aboriginal heritage and Bonegilla immigration collections.
The Hotel of Champions
 Soden’s Hotel is a glorious example of pioneering optimism preserved in stained glass Victorian architecture. It was a huge palatial building in its day, boasting over 60 rooms and 30 stables, magnificently appointed parlours and dining rooms, and all the latest mod cons, including that marvel electricity. But it was the race horses who stayed here, rather than its splendour, that created its mythic reputation.
Its equine residents reads like a history of Australian racing. The Melbourne Cup winners alone include Prince Foot in 1909, Piastre in 1912, Windbag in 1925, Statesman in 1928, the legendary Phar Lap in 1930, Peter Pan in 1932 and 1934, Hiraji in 1947, Foxami in 1949 and Delta in 1951. No wonder owners came to believe that their chances of winning the Cup were greatly enhanced by spending a night or two at Soden’s.
The French Connection
Residents and visitors have camped and swum along the leafy reaches of Norieul Park, on the banks of the Murray, since the first settlers arrived. Its name however, commemorates the gallantry of those who left. It is named after a small village in France where, in April 1917, the locally known Albury Battery fought bravely to protect it.
A quiet stroll through Norieul Park, along the Murray’s foreshores, to the Botanic Gardens is a soothing and relaxing experience which brings you to the “Garden end” of our most popular shopping precinct, Dean Street. Doing a “Deanie” is a favourite pastime where you can take in its cosmopolitan street life of cafes, bistros, restaurants, boutiques and all forms of entertainment, amidst the ebb and flow of locals and visitors alike.
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