Albury and Wodonga sit either side of where the nation’s busiest highway crosses our greatest river. As a meeting point of contrasts and cultures its significance stretches all the way back to the first Aboriginal inhabitants who gathered here long before the arrival of Europeans.

Being on the natural border between the two oldest and strongest colonies, Albury and Wodonga grew up as both river port and rail head. They were the start and end of much of the trade, travel and commerce between the two colonial powers. 

As a consequence of its strategic position, both geographically and politically, this bend in the mighty Murray has been playing host to native hunters, pioneering families, itinerant travellers, entrepreneurial businessmen, lost foreigners, gold diggers, bushrangers, refugees, prime ministers, Melbourne Cup winners and every sort of passersby for centuries.

The contrasts and contradictions of time and place, history and progress,
river and mountain, culture and cultivation have melded themselves into an unlikely harmony of differences not experienced anywhere else in the country.

Here you’ll find the unique blend of cosmopolitan city lifestyle and old-fashioned country hospitality. The modern city and the historical village sit comfortably together in a beautiful landscape of rich river plains and rugged snow-capped mountains. The past and the present are both here, alive and available. Art and adventure, gourmet cuisine and cottage gardens, solitude and shopping, vintage wines and modern sculpture, European sophistication and pioneer practicality are everywhere.

This duality of sense and style is a vivid and constant feature of our character.  We are twin cities astride two states of mind and nation, who are always shining new light through old windows, and happily shaking hands with strangers.

Welcome to Albury Wodonga.

We’re twice the place so you’ll have twice the time here,
and take home twice the memories.

Regional cuisine

Fine dining is nothing new to us. Good food has been plentiful, varied and sought after in the Albury Wodonga region for thousands of years. The first to enjoy the many delicacies of the region were the Wiradjuri people, the original custodians of this remarkable culinary countryside.

The nutritional generosity of the Murray and its verdant plains developed in them a culture of appreciation and care for local produce that has continued down to this day.

“Look after the land and the rivers and the land and the rivers will look after you.” This ancient Wiradjuri principle could just as easily have been written by the farmers working the fields and chefs preparing their produce today. The two are just as closely linked as when the Wiradjuri caught and ate their first Murray Cod.

Those first, locally-grown gourmets have been joined over the centuries by others, from more distant tribes and lands. Each bringing with them their own cultural improvisations and experiences, enhancing and refining what went before. So that now, today’s taste-bud tourist to our region has a much larger, far more imaginative culinary theme park in which to play and explore.

The most significant influence on the region’s cuisine was the arrival of hundreds of thousands of non English-speaking refugees and migrants from Europe, immediately after the Second World War. The vast majority of these people passed through the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, on their way to new lives in Melbourne, Sydney and anywhere else that workers were needed in our country. But many stayed in Albury Wodonga, setting up restaurants, cafes, delicatessens and smokehouses, to provide familiar food to homesick arrivals.

Along the way they introduced and educated local palates on the pleasures and refinements of European cooking. Their food culture has improved the cuisine and food sensibility of the entire country, but its influence and effects were first felt and established here.

The result of this inspired medley of the ancient and modern, the local and imported, is something quite unique in Australia - a distinct regional food ethic and cuisine whose recipe book is like an edible map of the world.

Our chefs and bakers, butchers, speciality cheese shopkeepers, fishmongers and greengrocers are all champions of our local produce, and know their growers by name. Because in an era of high volume, huge acreage production, our local farmers have chosen to grow our diversity of cold climate and river plains produce on a small scale, and rotating their crops seasonally. So that the very best of what the land provides is available at its natural peak, for our kitchens.

The manners and styles of how you can enjoy eating here is as broad as the menus themselves. You’ll find contemporary restaurants in heritage buildings, alfresco cafes on cobblestone streets, bistros in old banks, patisseries and pizzerias in colonial terraces. We’re as grand or as modest, contemporary or quirky as your own taste prefers. But whether you order a seared venison tenderloin, a crocodile and crab meat pie or simple bowl of chips, our architectural heritage and beautiful, sweeping countryside provide you with a wonderful complement to every meal.

If you prefer to discover and create your own food experiences then explore the possibilities at our many regular Farmers Markets, the Rutherglen Country Fair, our Food and Wine Festival, wine tours and tastings, and the many small speciality food shops throughout the region.

There you’ll find freshly-smoked, locally-caught Murray cod, trout, quail, rabbit and beef, German Kasseler and Weisswurst, Italian sausages and proscuitto, locally-grown olives, fruits and nuts, rich Millawa cheeses, Shiraz-filled chocolates and quince paste. All finished off with a freshly roasted coffee. Or perhaps a 100-year-old Muscat. But that’s another story. 

The secret garden & the perfect wine

Whether you’re a wine connoisseur or collector, someone who simply enjoys a glass or two with friends, or are just plain curious, then prepare yourself to experience some truly unique sensory pleasures. Our gifted location and a quirk of fate have conspired to create wines that cannot be found or replicated anywhere else in the world.

North eastern Victoria is blessed with the greatest diversity of altitude, soil types, rainfall and temperature in the country. This provided far-sighted winemakers with the rare opportunity of growing vines in cool climate alpine valleys, on hot plains, in rich sandy loams, granite-based soils and volcanic soils, to produce extremely different styles of wines in a relatively small area.

Today, our vineyards create the full range of classic wines for every palate, from intensely fruit-flavoured Chardonnays, Rieslings and Pinot Noir to rich Cabernet Sauvignon and sparkling Shiraz, crowned by the legendary Muscats and Tokays of Rutherglen. All of which can be personally appreciated and bought at cellar doors from Beechworth to Rutherglen.

However, it took a couple of ironic twists of fate to turn our unique growing conditions and vines into the secret garden of glorious creation that it is today.
 
By the late 19th Century our productive attributes, brilliantly exploited and led by the pioneering wine families of Rutherglen, had built our region into the largest wine growing area in Australia. Then, towards the end of the 1890s, the twin disasters of phylloxera and a decade of drought struck the state.

Phylloxera is a vine root eating insect that is more devastating than a plague of locusts. Brought in by ships from France, the nasty bug soon found its way into the soils of Rutherglen. As a precaution and prevention, the whole area was quarantined, and it remains isolated to this day.

Like the Great Wall of China, which was originally built to keep out the foreigners but also served to keep in the natives, so the great quarantine of Rutherglen stopped the spread of phylloxera and any of its root stock from leaving the area, too. Which means that there are lineages of grape and vines growing here that no longer exist anywhere else in Australia or the world.

Following on the heels of the imported disaster, came a local one in the hot shape of a 10-year long drought, to unknowingly add to Rutherglen’s future good fortunes.

The drought caused economic hardship, making wine hard to sell. Together with no water for irrigation, many of the state’s vineyards disappeared.

The consequences of these misfortunes provided Rutherglen, and its now rare vine stock, with a very unexpected and prosperous legacy of wines that are unique in the world.

Art & Culture

An unknown Koori artist painted the image of a Tasmanian Tiger on a local rock face some two thousand years ago and it can still be viewed today at the Yeddonba Aboriginal art site near Chiltern. If it’s not the very first, then it’s one of the oldest surviving public exhibitions of art in our neighbourhood. And unlike the subject of the painting, which became extinct a long time ago, artistic expression, in all its forms, has continued to flourish in the Albury Wodonga region ever since.

We are now one of Australia’s leading regional centres of art and cultural excellence, with a thriving artistic community, several of whom have achieved national and international success. Our many fine galleries, acclaimed theatre companies, concert halls and conservatoriums, museums and arts festivals rival the best in the country for quality and ingenuity, presenting regular performances and exhibitions of music and art from around the world.

The Albury Regional Art Centre is home to many of the finest works of Russell Drysdale, a true icon of Australian artistic originality. The Centre complements the famous on exhibition with regular presentations of works by young, contemporary Australian artists and photographers. While just a few beats away is the Murray Conservatorium of Music, where the modern world embraces the classical works of the Bachs and Mozarts.

At the very heart of the two cities, on Gateway Island in the middle of the Murray, you’ll find the nationally-acclaimed Hothouse Theatre Company, whose productions of contemporary and classic works are regularly presented at the nearby Butter Factory Theatre. And for those who like their classics in a dramatic setting, you can even enjoy Shakespeare, lit by a huge sunset, on the banks of the Murray.

The region also presents many popular cultural events throughout the year that feature local and international artists and themes. The Yackandandah Folk Festival and Beechworth Celtic Festival are widely recognised celebrations of our musical and cultural heritage.

Even though we take art seriously, we haven’t forgotten that it’s just as important to tickle the funny bone as it is to massage the brain cells. So we’ve made sure there’s also plenty here to entertain the quirky adventurer inside the culture collector. The Butter Factory also hosts regular comedy festivals and one-man shows, while Applause is our annual tribute to the sidewalk skills of our street buskers and performers.

Bushrangers, bankers & pioneers

 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.

The first of these intrepid visitors were William Hovell and Hamilton Hume. On November 16, 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 it was another 12 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 was right in the middle of it.

Gold was found all over the place, from Ophir to the north and Ballarat to the south, but it was in nearby Beechworth that the richest alluvial deposits in the country were discovered. At its peak more than a billion dollars (in today’s values) a year came out of the ground, enough money to build the finest inland city of its day.

The gold rush provided Beechworth with a superb architectural legacy, with more than 30 of its buildings now heritage listed. 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.

The region’s deep and rich settler and colonial history is preserved in its many museums, buildings and precincts. The Burke Museum in Beechworth is in itself a museum piece, being a perfectly preserved example of Victorian centre of philanthropic learning. The Chiltern Museum, Jindera Pioneer Museum and Bandiana Army Museum share the chapters of this country’s story.

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 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.

Our big backyard

Is there a city anywhere in Australia that has such a gloriously big backyard, full of so many natural wonders, as ours to play in?  The very best attributes of our great land, its snowy mountains and forested foothills, sprawling valleys and fertile plains, clear lakes and streams and its fascinatingly unique wildlife have all been drawn together by the majesty of the Murray.

They invite you to join them in enjoying our natural gifts. Here, nature visits you.

Our mighty river icon, fed by the pure waters of melting snow, is the liquid path through a vast fenceless zoological garden. Framed by the muscular forms of centuries-old River Red Gums, the Murray is home, feeding place and holiday resort to a vivid range of animals, fish and birds.

White plumed honeyeaters, rainbow bee eaters, cormorants and kookaburras, eastern rosellas, wood ducks and swamp hens can be seen sharing the air space and shallows, feasting and festooning themselves amongst the Murray’s billabongs and lagoons. While below the water, Murray Cod, platypus and tortoises share the shaded roots of the gums.

High up in the silver wattles squirrel gliders and brush tail possums launch themselves from tree to tree. While on the ground dusky moors and darters dance about hysterically.

Downstream, on the Murray floodplains, are the unique Wonga Wetlands, a natural conservation area with bird hides for the serious naturalist, that is home to more than 130 species of birds.

For those who prefer to take in nature’s big beautiful brushstrokes, there is Huon Hill Lookout. Rising more than 260 metres above the Murray valley, this easily-walked-to vantage point provides a panoramic view of Albury Wodonga, Lake Hume and the Kiewa River, three converging valleys, river plains and the surrounding mountain ranges in vividly natural technicolour.

Then there is the spectacular Lake Hume.

Spreading out over more than a million hectares of rugged countryside, Lake Hume is both a magnificent achievement of human engineering ingenuity, and a beautiful natural resource.

Held back by a 1600 metre-long concrete and earthen embankment, the Mitta Mitta and Murray Rivers have accumulated six times the amount of water of Sydney Harbour, creating over 350 kilometres of shoreline and inlets. Lake Hume is a spectacular man-made aquatic playground for families and fishermen, sailers and windsurfers. It also marks the place at which explorers Hume and Hovell crossed the Murray.

Planes, trains & automobiles

We’ve had visitors coming here for centuries so it’s not surprising that we’ve made getting here, from anywhere in the country, really easy.

Albury Airport is just ten minutes from the Albury city centre, and fifteen minutes from Wodonga, with Qantas and Regional Express providing multiple flights in and out of Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and several other regional centres.

If you need a car or bus when you’re here you’ll find all the major car rental companies and coach lines are represented here.

A lovely way to see the country at a leisurely pace is to do it by bike. There are several bicycle rental shops in the region with a wide range of bikes for every type of terrain.

Albury Wodonga is on the major railway link between Melbourne and Sydney, providing you with day and night express services between the two capital cities. Travel times are approximately the same as driving by road.

Albury Wodonga is also the perfect place to base yourself while touring around and exploring our remarkably diverse and intriguing region. A leisurely day trip in virtually any
direction will take you into a different landscape of diverse cultures, history, heritage and experiences. 

North of here are the fertile farming areas of vast pastures and expansive wheat fields, beef studs and sheep farms spreading out around picturesque villages and country towns, museums and historic buildings and colonial architecture.

To the east is where our natural adventureland of rugged, untamed natural wilderness and the source of the great Murray itself. Where the valleys begin to ascend the mountains you’ll find sleepy hamlets and secluded artist’s galleries, or enjoy playing in or by the expansive stretches of Lake Hume.

Travelling south you move headlong back into our Gold Rush past, where the elegance of  Victorian architecture rises out of a sweeping, picturesque landscape that is as rewarding to the visitor as the gold metal under it was to the prospectors that came before.

A meandering journey up the Kiewa Valley will take you deep into Alpine country, through foothill forests, past fertile dairy and cattle country and to the towering faces of the magnificent Victorian Alps.

South west lies the valley of grapes, where fifth and sixth generations of family winemakers continue to hone their skills and honour their living heirlooms by producing some of the finest wines in the world.

Our very hospitable climate

Our region has a Mediterranean climate, which means that the changes of season are quite vivid.

We have hot, dry summers (cooler in the Alpine regions) mild autumns and springs, and cool winters.

We enjoy long stretches of clear, blue skies in summer, and crisp sunny days in winter.

In fact, we get as many hours of sunshine as they do on the Gold Coast in Queensland. Which means that you can come here any time of the year and enjoy lots of sunny times touring around or just relaxing in our magnificent countryside.

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