Albury-Wodonga: A Cultural Profile

The 'twin cities'

Albury is second largest inland city in New South Wales (behind Wagga Wagga) and Wodonga is a smaller city on the Victorian side of the border. Because of its closer proximity to Melbourne and the fact that the local television is broadcast from Victoria (including the VFL football), Albury has much closer cultural ties with Victoria than with New South Wales.

Situated on the old Hume Highway (now bypassed by the new Hume Freeway), the 'twin cities' are a major transit point for interstate commerce. The railway station is on the main Sydney-Melbourne railway line and Albury Airport is the second busiest regional airport in New South Wales (with around 210,000 passenger movements per year).

In the early 1970s Albury Wodonga was the focus of a Federal Government scheme to arrest the growth of Australia's large coastal cities by encouraging decentralisation. Some industries were enticed to move there but the current combined population of approximately 96,000 residents is far below the 300,000 projected some forty years ago.

While in many senses Albury Wodonga operates as one community, the cities share some of the many legislative, regulatory and other anomalies experienced by other Murray River towns, differences between State legislations and policies that complicate doing business across the border. The Victorian and New South Wales Governments have been meeting since 2006 to discuss resolving the difficulties but these (costly) problems are far from resolved.

A brief history

The town of Albury was founded in 1839, some fifteen years after the explorers Hume and Hovell arrived at the Murray River in 1824. A log punt was established in 1844 to service the crossing of the river and 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. Its twin city, Wodonga was founded as a customs post on the other side of the river in 1852. Commerce with Melbourne increased, the first bridge was built in 1860 and the towns of Albury and Wodonga began to grow.

Indigenous history

Little history is documented about the relationship of Aboriginal people and the European settlers in Albury Wodonga, although there is known to have been fierce Aboriginal resistance to the intrusion of whites in the district and the establishment of Albury is believed to have taken place following the "Faithful" massacre. Despite the Wiradjuri people's occupation of the area for many thousands of years, there are now only few remainders of the Aboriginal population of the area. The Indigenous population of Albury Wodonga is just 1.6% compared with the national figure of 2.4%. Nonetheless, the annual Mungabareen Ngan-Girra Festival - which commemorates an old Aboriginal tradition of the meeting or "mini-parliament" of the seven Indigenous tribes of the district (including a Bogong moth feast) - is celebrated in Albury each year in November.

Albury Community Wood Fired Oven. Photo courtesy Albury City Council

Industry, education & media

Because of the Murray River's rich agricultural production, the region has been dubbed "The Murray Food Bowl" and there are numerous restaurants and wineries situated along the river, including celebrated wine district of Rutherglen " home of world-renown muscats " which is around 50km west of Wodonga. The massive Hume Dam, with the capacity to hold six times the volume of Sydney Harbour, was constructed 15km east of Albury in 1936 for irrigation purposes and also features a 50km recreational trail crossing six waterways. Renown as a feat of engineering, it has unfortunately also caused significant changes to the flow patterns and ecology of the Murray River.

Despite its location and links with agriculture, Albury Wodonga has a substantial industrial employment sector. There is a large newsprint paper mill and an an engineering plant in Albury and a logistics distributions hub, a pet food factory, a cardboard box factory and a foundry in Wodonga (which also houses the Australian corporate headquarters for Mars Corp and an Australian Army logistics base and technical training centre). This has meant that Albury-Wodonga, unusually for an Australian inland city, is not dependent on agriculture, although the average income of the Albury area, at $36K per year, is below the $42K average for the state of New South Wales and there is a 5.3% unemployment rate.

The broader Murray Region is experiencing a skills shortage across all sectors of the workforce and Albury Wodonga has significant shortages of health professionals, planners, metal workers and truck drivers. (A local steel fabricator recently had to forgo $1.5m in contracts because they did not have the workforce available to fulfill available orders.)

Local educational facilities are working with government to try to address the skills shortage. Albury is home to one of the five campuses of Charles Sturt University as well as campuses of the Riverina Institute of TAFE and the UNSW Rural Clinical School of Medicine. Wodonga is the home of a campus of La Trobe University and the Wodonga Institute of TAFE.

Albury also serves as a regional media centre. The daily tabloid, The Border Mail, has offices in Wodonga and Albury and two local television news bulletins are produced by Prime Television in Albury and WIN Television in Ballarat (Victoria). Albury also has three commercial radio stations and a locally produced breakfast and morning radio show on ABC Local Radio.

The new AlburyCity LibraryMuseum opened in 2007. Photo courtesy Albury City Council

Arts and culture

The twin cities of Albury Wodonga feature a thriving arts culture, much of which is conducted in a cross-border fashion. The Albury Regional Art Gallery houses one of Australia's finest photographic collections and it presents a substantial public program of local and touring exhibitions. Albury is home of the internationally famous Flying Fruit Fly Circus, a troupe of home-grown young acrobats established in 1979 which now tours internationally and has a world-wide reputation for innovation and excellence. Hothouse Theatre, located on Gateway Island, equidistant between Albury and Wodonga, is a leading regional theatre that produces its own shows - including major, award-winning work - as well as presenting touring productions. There is also the Albury Performing Arts Centre which presents mostly touring shows and the major new, converged exhibition facility and collecting institution, AlburyCity LibraryMuseum, which opened in July 2007 and is quickly establishing itself as "the living room of the city" with its state-of-the-art technology, interactive exhibitions and reading and research facilities.

Albury Regional Art Gallery. Photo courtesy Albury City Council.

Albury has a growing local scene of rock music bands and fans with local cafes and hotels supporting local acts and touring national bands. The annual Border Music Camp attracts young people from as far as Sydney and the Groovin' The Moo Music Festival visits every November with major national headline acts.

The actors Richard Roxburgh and Maggie Kirkpatrick, the actor/writer Noel Hodda, Australian rules footballer Brett Kirk, Olympic swimmer Clementine Stoney, the anti-communist priest Dr `Paddy' Ryan, and the fashion designer Lisa Ho, were all born in Albury.

15km east of Wodonga is the Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre, which saw more than 320,000 migrants pass through its barracks between 1947 and 1971 and which now features an interpretive centre at the only surviving block of huts, telling their story through photographs and a "listening wall".

50km west of Wodonga is the celebrated wine district of Rutherglen and the broader Murray River's rich agricultural production has led to the region being named "The Murray Food Bowl". There are numerous quality restaurants along the river as well as a "Chefs of the Murray" program, whose ambassador is Mildura's Stefano de Pieri (whose TV series, A Gondola on the Murray featured chefs of the highest merit working in regional Australia using regional produce.

The river has also inspired a cultural festival featuring diverse events along its banks every year.

References
All figures from 2006 census
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albury-Wodonga
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albury,_New_South_Wales
http://www.awahs.com.au