so a thank you to the boomerang it's been a good little stay not a bad little
motel here in Albury Wodonga the breakfast was not bad pretty plain you
know just the usual Continental bit of toast coffee orange juice but very
welcoming and we're gonna pop into Albury and have a little look around see what
we have here so Bon Voyage so you've got these typical Aussie style houses
little single-story what we would call bungalows I think they're really pretty
and that's pretty close to the center of Albury or Albury-Wodonga I really
don't know what to call this town it's it's a bipolar town I think but you've
got those pretty old style very traditional town properties and then
just up here in the corner is the town centre I would say this old church
building here is probably well there's another one there actually it's probably
the heart of the town so yes marriage for equality
they've even got the rainbow on there
you're not going to find a church in Australia that would say no you just I
don't think it could exist in Australia
now I do love these old towns they still have a
lot of that sort of art deco feeling even though this is a fairly ugly block
in front of us it's got a bit of an art deco feel to it like it might have been
a nice cinema at one time or maybe even a town hall the Australian Mutual and
Provident Society it's lovely old buildings in the centre
you've got this result courthouse here you can imagine that Albury would have
been a really nice quaint small town at one time and it's now it's sprawling
it's a lot bigger but there's still a lot of remnants of the old city in the
centre it's another sort of what I think is art deco style so it's probably built
in the 1930s maybe this building actually says established in 1876 and
whether that's the company but the style at the top of that building it looks to me
like it's more so the 1920's 1930's now if you're actually watching this and
you're from Albury and Wodonga tell me why why this is classified as a city you
know there is no underground metro system there is no above-ground
rail system that I can see there's certainly not a cathedral in here so so
what classifies this is a city I know I know people in Australia will be quite
passionate about the fact that their town is a city and I often see a lot of
towns around Australia that I would classify as a village called towns so
I'm not sure how we how we work over here I mean I've been here long enough I
should do but they still feel too small to be a city it's a very beautiful town
and as if almost to collaborate what I'm saying this is the Town Hall
of Albury so the original townhall not a city hall with Town Hall this
foundation stone was laid in the honor of Thomas Waddell MLA colonial Treasury
maybe of New South Wales 9th of December 1907 so whether we're just in the
original part of Albury or not all the Town Hall buildings they refer to Albury
they're not talking about word Angga so I'm wondering if there's actually
another town center which would have been more the old traditional heart of
Wodonga but this feels at the moment like it's more than the center of the
city or town so a little about Albury that I can tell you from a personal
point of view it's the town that is on the Hume Highway proximately halfway
between Melbourne and Sydney so it's often the place where people stop for
many years driving up here I've often stopped at Albury it's sort of
halfway point it's a good place to come you get this lots of places to eat I
mean Pretty much heaps you can pretty much find any supermarkets
this is the area that where the fuel prices..big dog
this is definitely the place to stop and get your fuel and pretty much all of the
towns on the drive up now have been bypassed by the Hume Highway so quite a
lot of the really cool little towns on the drive up here now are pretty
isolated whereas Albury Wodonga is actually still just on the edge of the
Hume so it's pretty easy to just sort of dodge into Albury and and have some spot
of lunch refuel may the fork be with you
the chocolate Labrador sorry we're closed so some places are still closed
on the weekend but most of the eateries most of the big stores they're all open
now there are two other towns I always love to pull into on the drive up from
Melbourne Sydney Sydney to Melbourne and that is Holbrook which again has been
bypassed now but I think it's a nice place to drop in for some reason there
is a submarine there so it was always a great one for the kids to call in they
can climb all over the submarine so this is what Holbrook is really famous for
HMAS Otway why is the town firstly why is it called Holbrook because it hasn't
always been called Holbrook and why does it have a submarine and all this
submarine memorabilia there's a torpedo over there there's a cutaway of a
another sub water another submarine over here let me get to a more appropriate
vantage point to share this story with you some shame to say I've never
actually been up on top of the submarine Holbrook and he were during the First
World War there was an Aussie Submariner who sank I think it was a Turkish
submarine and his name was Holbrook now originally this town was called German
tongue as in German town because Germany fell out of sort of popularity the name
German town became really unpopular with the locals they wanted to change it so
they renamed this town to Holbrook in honor of the young man I'm not sure if
he was from this town there is a memorial to him just over here so that's
pretty fascinating so yeah they renamed it from Germantown
German ttan to Holbrook and hence we also have this submarine here it's a
sort of shell of a submarine and the kids can play on it a little there they
can go down inside and play it's just really fun it's a great town it's become
known as the sort of submarine town it used to be on the main road driving
between Melbourne and Sydney you now have to actually come off the hume so if
you want to come and visit this town you really should and never
drive up this way without popping in and visiting the submarine and just saying
hello to the people of Holbrook
the other great little stop is dog and the Tucker box which is very famous in
Australia but they're just completely bypassed it and I wonder because I
haven't been there for maybe at least six or seven years whether it's still in
business it's an iconic sort of stopping point on the drive up between Melbourne
and Sydney and the history of the dollar than the Tucker box I always thought it
was in Gundagai I don't know why I've been in many times before gonig I was
only a few kilometres down the road so we pulled into Gundagai at first
beautiful outlook behind us farms back here
there's welcome to the dog in the Tucker box is a sort of cafe and souvenir shop
and a story of the dog on a Tucker box is a legend really it's um it's to do
with a cattle drover who had a I think he died and the dog guarded his tucker
box and guarded it football I think guard it until the dog died I
think that's the original story and it's a famous sir old poem goes back to the
early part of the 1900s now the odd thing is that actually the dog on the
Tucker box is is not a true story it's just a poem so he never actually existed
but the legend is real I do think it's a little bit of a shame that we've allowed
all the lovely towns that are on the Hume Highway on the drive up from
Melbourne to Sydney to be bypassed because a lot of them now are dying in
my mind it would have been better if the people the town has stood up to the
government and stopped them building these bypasses you know you see it
working really well in Europe where the main sort of thrower the traffic goes
through the town and they have a sort of loop round for heavy goods vehicles
roads trains to keep those vehicles out of the Tramp town centres but to
keep the people coming through and it was never a problem and we used to drive
up here and go through Gundagai and go through Holbrooke it was
never a big problem sure the big road trains were a bit of a pain but you know
invest that money I think in putting loops around the town and make it
inconvenient for the road trains to go right not inconvenient they can still go
at speed and go around the towns but if the people were still going through what
we've done instead is we've kind of built these loops around that take all
the traffic outside the town it's more complicated it's almost an inconvenience
to go into the towns and hence they're dying another example of a government
that really doesn't represent anybody constantly doing things to make things a
little bit worse your thoughts your comments love to hear what you have to
say apparently there's an art museum somewhere around here not sure where
nobody's are really nice little town centre actually it's got a lot going for
it one of the problems we have here in Australia is outside of the main cities
a lot of the larger towns are dying but I think all Britain would longer
actually is a good example of a town that's surviving quite well you've got
this nice little laneways here I mean it's Sunday not many of them are open
that could be a sign of the times it's just the week before Christmas we do
have to make these larger cities sustainable if we're not all going to
cram our population is ever-increasing population of Australia into these
tightly little compact areas in a handful of major cities we need places
like Aubrey and word aangre to thrive and survive
sadly why while all the little shops are struggling the big stores are doing very
well thank you I think it's a great little town lots of character not a new
world and old-world charm so yep definitely stop here don't sort of power
drive up the Hume and just drive between Melbourne oh they got the coast road and
really enjoy some of the most beautiful parts of Victoria and New South Wales
along the coast but if you come up the Hume at least stop here overnight or a
couple of days even in Albury Wodonga and check out there is a lot to see the
only thing I would say is don't call in on a Sunday or do call in the sunny but
don't make a a big stopover on a sunday because it's pretty quiet in the town
you
if you follow the world till it leads you back home you'll find that the
answer is yes