Albury-Wodonga

From World travel guide

Albury-Wodonga is a twin city straddling the Murray River border of the two south-eastern Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria. Albury is the city on the New South Wales bank of the river, Wodonga the Victorian city on the southern bank. For all practical purposes related to travel, the two cities are one conurbation.

1 Understand
2 Get in
- 2.1 By plane
- 2.2 By car
3 External links

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Understand

Whilst in many senses Albury-Wodonga operates as a single community, the twin cities possess parallel municipal governments and state government services. The greater proximity of Melbourne and the local predominance of Australian Rules Football perhaps give Albury a closer cultural affiliation with Victoria.

Albury-Wodonga was selected as the primary focus of the federal Whitlam government's scheme to arrest 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. Some industries were enticed to move there, and a certain amount of population movement resulted, but the plans quickly faded away with the next change of government and the long-term result was little changed.

The Wiradjuri people were probably the tribe of indigenous Australians resident immediately before the advent of Europeans in the area in the 1820s-1830s. European settlement was first gazetted at this popular river crossing in 1839 and after a decade a small settlement was well established. 1851 saw the separation of Victoria from New South Wales as a separate colony with the Murray marking much of the border. Albury and Wodonga became the focus of steam-driven merchant shipping on the river and a permanent bridge was built in 1860.

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