Albury. The Colonial Mutual Insurance building. Art Deco style. Built in the 1930s.
Image by denisbin
Albury.
New South Wales was settled by whites in 1788 but it was 1824 before the first white explorer Hamilton Hume and William Hovell and their party of eight men ventured to this region of NSW. They reported favourably on what they saw in this region especially the fast flowing river which Hume named after his father. Later in 1830 Charles Sturt when he left the Murrumbidgee thought he had discovered a new river and he named it the Murray River after his friend in the British Colonial Office, Sir George Murray, Secretary of the Colonies. The first pastoralist to arrive in the district was Charles Ebden in 1835 who took out runs each side of the river which he named Bonegilla and Mungabareena. Wodonga station was then taken up in 1836. Major Mitchell visited the district on his Australia Felix expedition of 1836. But the first man to reside in the Albury district was Robert Brown who did that in 1836. Brown saw the “crossing place” as a business opportunity so he opened a store and around 1840 he got a license to operate an inn at the spot. In 1842 Brown and his wife occupied the Hume Inn which the hostelry was called. Browns Inn later was renamed the Turkish Inn after Brown moved to a pastoral property in 1845. Earlier in 1838 the government sent a surveyor to the spot and he surveyed a town and named it Albury after a village in Kent. Town lots were sold in October 1839 with all being sold. One was sold on to Robert Brown in 1841 which was when he built his Hume Inn hotel. Further town lots were sold in 1840 and 1843. A government report noted that there were 65 people in Albury by 1845. Once the first flourmill was built in 1846 local farmers began to grow wheat but Albury was still a settlement rather than a town as it had no schools, no churches, etc. A post service to Albury from Sydney began in 1847 with an unofficial post office in a store. As the town emerged this was moved to the first Post Office in 1861. This was later replaced by the grand structure that graces the city now. It was built in 1877 and the Telegraph Station (now the Murray Conservatorium of Music) in 1886. Court sessions began in 1847 with the stone courthouse being erected in 1860. The main street Dean Street began to appear like a major town streetscape. The first Catholic Church was built in 1858 but was replaced with the current much grander stone structure in 1872. The well-known architect Edmund Blacket designed the Albury Anglican Church which was erected in 1857. A few years later it was replaced by a new church in 1876 which incorporated one wall and the tower base of the 1857 church. The adjoining two storey rectory was completed in 1870. The first public hospital opened in Albury in 1861 and the town by then had several fine banks, grand hotels, general stores and a town school. The first National School opened in 1850 and was then relocated to Olive Street in 1861. Today that is the campus of Albury High School and the third Albury Public School opened in 1892 in David Street.
Part of the reason or the growth of Albury in the mid-1850s was the arrival of the first paddle steamers from Goolwa and Milang in South Australia. They brought foodstuffs and grain for the gold mining centres of Beechworth and Yackandandah etc. But this was also the time when large pastoral estates gave way to surveyed land for farmers and agriculturists. The population of the hinterland began to increase and Albury became the regional town for goods and services. 1856 was the year the Albury published its first newspaper and throughout this period conflict emerged with Victoria (created as a separate colony in 1851) over customs and border tariffs. 1856 was also the year in which NSW politician Henry Parkes spoke of Albury as a future federal capital. The Albury Mechanics Institute was formed in 1858 and Albury was declared a municipality in 1859 with its first mayor. By the mid-1860s the town had several doctors, solicitors, teachers, brewers, manufacturers, millers, drapers, butchers, saddlers and all the occupations expected of a large sized country town on its way to becoming a regional city. The arrival of the railway from Sydney added further to the economic development of Albury. The Victorian rail line had reached Wodonga in 1873 but the NSW line from Sydney did not reach Albury until 1880. The grand Italianate style railway station opened in 1881. A wooden rail bridge was completed a cross the Murray in 1883(replaced by an iron one in 1884) and a through service, albeit with a change of trains and rail gauge at Albury, became possible. To accommodate two trains for a change over the platform at Albury is especially long. Passengers also had to go through a Customs inspection at Albury until federation in 1901. The first passenger train with no change of gauge travelled between Sydney and Melbourne in 1962 drawn by diesel engines instead of steam trains.
Present day Albury is a city of many fine buildings. These include Bonegilla house in Kiewa Street which is heritage listed by NSW authorities. It took its name from a district along the Murray River outside of Wodonga. The house was built in 1857 in a typically Georgian style when it was on the edge of Albury. It was built for David Bowen-Jones. From 1880 to 1900 it was the residence of Arthur Phillips the manager of the Commercial Bank in Albury and it was around this time( about 1880) that the cast iron lacework and verandas were added to make it more Australian in appearance! In later years land attached to the house was sold off as town blocks in 1900 and again in 1938. After the Phillips sold the house in 1900 its ownership changed quite frequently until it was auctioned off in 1938. The Red Cross then operated Bonegilla during World War Two as a hostel for wives visiting husbands at the Bonegilla Military hospital outside Albury. After the Second World War it became the local Young Women’s Christian Association hostel. In more recent years it has been privately owned and restored. (After World War Two the named Bonegilla was used for the migrant hostel operated at the location of Bonegilla.) Opposite Bonegilla is another grand Albury house named Bellvue. It was built a bit later than Bonegilla but is too a great example of a 19th century mansion. A bit further along Kiewa Street is the imposing Albury High School. It was founded in 1920 and this magnificent building opened in 1928 at a cost of over £26,000. The current Albury Public School was built in David Street in 1892 with the then latest federation style architecture- red bricks, fancy moulded bricks, gables etc. but with classical style pilasters against the walls. Back in the Main Street you can see a number of outstanding Art Deco style commercial buildings including the AMP Society building erected in 1940 and the T & G Insurance building also erected in 1940. A twenty minute walk from here will take you to 607 Lindsay Avenue where you can see a superb Art Deco style two storey residence with the addition of some 1950s modern style curves and steel framed windows. That house was built in 1949 and is a gem. The other area for Art Deco structures is amazing War memorial tower on a Western Hill at the end of the Main Street. This is a memorial to those who served during World War One. When the city was considering a memorial they thought of the public square beside the Town Hall in Dean Street. But a visitor, Charles Reade from Adelaide who had designed Colonel Lights Gardens as a model garden city, suggested the top of Western Hill which is completely aligned with Dean Street. The memorial is 100 feet high which means it is 300 feet above Dean Street. It is Art Deco in style, designed by architect Louis Harrison, as is the public toilet block near the War Memorial. Both were opened in 1925 with the foundation stone being laid in 1924 as a centenary marker for the explorers Hume and Hovell who came here in 1824.
