Albury - Wodonga Region

Culture and Lifestyle

As with many other Australian rural towns sporting activities and service clubs dominate social opportunities. Albury-Wodonga has formalised this in the form of the Albury-Wodonga Sports Festival now held annually. There are not many sports that cannot be done here - there is even a SCUBA diving club (we are 300 km from the sea). Geoff for example moved to Albury thirty years ago from Wangaratta and there is rarely a day that he does not either play sport or watch sport. He plays tennis, squash, touch football, golf and not so long ago (so he says) used to box. He lives in Central Albury with his wife and three children on Monument Hill and takes a twenty minute walk to work, thereby avoiding the three minute traffic jams at 'peak hour'.

Fewer women than men play sport. They are busy with their children and home caring. But newcomers are not dependent upon sporting groups to access the community. There are many other opportunities such as the Murray Conservatorium Choir and Orchestra which is closely associated with the Murray Conservatorium. Julie is a relative newcomer to the region. She arrived five years ago with her husband and two young children. Apart from picnics on the Murray river bank on hot summer afternoons, she prefers to be involved in creative pursuits rather than outdoor activities and sports. She joined the amateur theatre group and helped put on the Mikado, she has since joined a women's acapella singing group and does volunteer work at the Environment Centre and the Toy Library. It was through the toy library that she met Meera, who had moved to Albury from India. Meera's oldest daughter, Jayna, often babysits her children. Jayna, has just finished her high school studies and, to Meera's relief, has chosen to stay in Albury whilst she studies drama and journalism through distance education mode. She would sorely miss her daughter if she left and the courses offered by Charles Sturt University in the region have greatly expanded her children's options.

Of greatest surprise when Julie moved to Albury was the welcome and friendliness of shop staff - a great difference to the abruptness and disinterest of Sydney service providers. Coming from a large metropolitan area she is also delighted and sometimes disconcerted that on her visits to town she invariably meets several people that she knows and it seems that it isn't possible to remain anonymous in Albury. Albury-Wodonga is rich in diversity of culture and sporting opportunities - these are not always recognised, utilised or respected, but they are there nonetheless.

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Prepared by Theresia Powell ..... Charles Sturt University