Albury & District Historical Society

Albury: A Moment in Time is an exciting new community photography project run by Albury & District Historical Society, with the support of the Wodonga Albury Camera Club and the Albury LibraryMuseum.
Our aim is simple: to capture Albury & District as it looks today, its streets, businesses, people, heritage and everyday life, so that future generations have an authentic record to look back on. Think of it as our community’s own year book, a moment in time preserved for tomorrow.
For a closer look at the Flyer and for Terms and Conditions, visit https://www.alburyhistory.org.au/eventsactivities/

Horse drawn carriages in Dean street, late 1880s. The view is looking to the east, east of Kiewa street. The fence of the 1860 Courthouse can be recognised on the left of the street. On the right is A Goetz, watchmaker and jeweller – he moved to the site in 1886 after operating from Kiewa street. Next is A Cass, wholesale and retail fruiterer, he advertised at that site from 1878 to the mid-1880s. The next store is Bon Marche drapery, at that site for about 10 years from the mid-1880s. The Albury Banner newspaper office is the tall building then the second of three buildings at that site occupied by the AMP Society – the first burnt down in December 1885, the second was demolished to make for the third which opened in 1941.

The view from the top of the hill at the northern end of Kiewa Street, looking south. In the old photo, no Mercy Hospital (opened 1957) and no Albury HIgh School (moved to its Kiewa St site in March 1928 after establishing in Thurgoona St in 1920). Named Poole's Hill, refer tohttps://alburyhistory.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Poole-Street-Pooles-Hill.pdf

How long since a scene like this has been seen in Albury? A bullock team with a load of wool outside the building which started as the Albury Telegraph Office, date unknown. Note also on the extreme left the gas light in the centre of the Dean & Olive St intersection.
Albury was one of the largest wool selling centres in Australia. Farmers & Graziers’ Woolstore (1929) was Australia’s largest inland wool store - by 1962 its floor space totalled 6.8 acres and could display 12,000 bales of wool.

The ‘Then’ photo has work in progress on extensions along Kiewa St to the Albury Post Office, 1954. The NSW Heritage Register describes it as “A substantial Victorian Free Classical post office with an overall Palazzo form. The building is of two stories, constructed of stuccoed brick with moulded decoration. The ground level consists of colonnade archwork and the first floor of segmental arch window openings with exaggerated keystones, separated by pilasters.”

James Higgins was a coach builder in Albury from the early 1870s. In March 1885 his first building had burnt down - the ‘Then’ photo shows his new coach factory in Townsend Street (now Elm Court Motel). The factory opened in 1885 - in 1886 he employed 35 men in the business. The ‘Albury Banner’ reported in 1922 that “A ‘Higgins turn out’ has long been recognised as the high water mark in the trade, and quality first has always been the motto of the builder … the leading features of all the vehicles are first-class workmanship, first-class style, and the best materials obtained in the markets of the world.”

Corner of Smollett St and Olive St c1870. St Patrick’s Church was blessed and opened on November 24, 1872. Visible on the left of the old photo is the Mercy convent. Blessed and opened in February 1870, the three-storey building was for many years Albury’s tallest building.
In the middle is St Brigid’s, built in 1858 as a brick church/schoolroom. It continued as a school after St. Patrick’s Church was completed and was demolished in 1938.
The Christian Brothers opened their school (left in the new photo) in 1917.

The F***y Ceres flour mill occupied the corner of Dean street and Townsend street. The top image is from a lithograph of Albury published in January 1881 by ‘The Illustrated Sydney News’ with the F***y Ceres mill on the south-east corner. Note that there was then no Elizabeth street, bottom right is the Albury Club Hotel. On the Smollett street corner the two buildings are the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney and the Exchange Hotel.
The F***y Ceres Mill (bottom photo) was built for James McLaurin in 1851 where the Beehive building is today. It was named F***y for F***y Brown, daughter of Robert Brown and Ceres after the Roman goddess of corn. In 1861, ownership passed to George Day after a property swap with McLaurin. When George Day became Member for Hume in 1874, the mill passed to James Hayes. The mill closed on January 21, 1887 when James Hayes opened his new mill in Townsend St.

Richard Rankin took over the Globe’s license in 1908. The Globe’s owner, Patrick Fallon, died in 1907 and Rankin bought the hotel for 11,000 pounds from the Fallon estate in 1911. He built the Dean street extension in 1913. Rankin sold the Globe license in 1919. This dates the ‘Then’ photo to somewhere between 1913 and 1919. For more detail on the Globe Hotel, see “The Globe Hotel, Such a Nice Place”, by Howard Jones and available at the Albury LibraryMuseum in Kiewa street.
The sign ‘Abbotsford the Best Ale’ possibly hung from the verandah of the original Albion Hotel.

The ‘Then’ photo has the Albury Railway Bridge with its decorative but non-functional pillars above deck level and before the chords were extended in the 1960s. The chords are now further raised with steel stanchions to allow for double-stacked freight trains to pass through.
In June 1883, the Sydney to Melbourne link was completed when a temporary railway bridge across the Murray River was opened. The permanent bridge was opened in August 1884. The steel structure was fabricated in London and shipped to Australia for assembly.