13 October 2012 - Albury All Seasons Tourist Park, Lavington, New South Wales

It was just 4 degrees this morning however the skies promised an excellent day. Tomorrow is to be even colder hopefully a portent for an even better day. With the eski packed with lunch, we headed off for our day’s adventure.

Our first stop was yet another lookout, this time that on the Eastern Hill Reserve on the south eastern edge of Albury. The hill is home to several communication towers which does not usually bode well for picturesque viewing however we were delighted to find a gate and pathway out along a ridge offering fabulous views over the two cities, Lake Hume, to the distant snow covered mountains and extensive rural lands all about.

Satisfied at last to have managed an elevated aspect of the area, we continued on to Lake Hume, aka the Murray River dammed by the Hume Weir, which has resulted in a reservoir covering 20,190 hectares, or six times the size of the Sydney Harbour (that ever present Australian measuring stick).

The original weir was constructed in 1936, with a capacity of 1522 gigalitres, but between 1950 and 1961 further work increased double this. A hydro-electric power station was added in 1957.

During the years between the two great wars, the project was equated with the Sydney Harbour Bridge as one of the mightiest Australian structures. On completion in 1936 it was one of the largest dams in the world.

The Hume Weir

The dam is currently undergoing major works, a mere $33 million being spent to reinforce the retaining wall against future earthquakes. The thought of this dam being burst by such an event just does not bear thinking about! Today it meant we were unable to walk across the weir, something that is normally possible. We have seen films showing great plumes of water spewing through the spillway; today there was little more than a trickle through that aperture, although a fair volume was coming through the turn stocks of the power station. This suggests that the water levels are not as they might be, and yet the dam is full. Research tells me that in 2007 during the drought years the levels fell to a mere 1%.

Today being Saturday, there were several fizz boats out on the water however it was still relatively early and many families were still busy with Saturday morning sport. No doubt there were many families out doing what Australian families do best by lunchtime, making good use of the excellent picnic and barbeque facilities. Lake Hume is indeed a very attractive lake, particularly so because it is surrounded by green hills as opposed to the red earth of so many of the reservoirs we have visited of late.

We drove on across the Murray River, below the dam and back into Victoria, stopping at the Bonegilla Migrant Experience centre, right on the southern edge of the lake.

The complex was originally built as the Bonegilla Army Camp during the Second World War, strategically important because of its proximity to the state border when the two states had different rail gauges causing considerable disruption to rapid deployment of men and supplies. Bonegilla became a transfer centre for army, just as Wodonga seems to be today for so much more, in new-speak, a logistics centre.

In 1947 it became the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, and until 1971 served as Australia’s largest and longest operating migrant centre. It had its own churches, banks, sporting fields, cinema, hospital, police station and railway platform. During the great influx of migrants in 1949 and 1950, officials estimated that Bonegilla could cope with up to 7,700 people in its unlined wooden huts with tin roofs and an extra 1,600 people in tents. There would eventually be 832 huts on the 240 hectare site.

During the 1960s, the centre could apparently comfortably house 4,000 people however more commonly, there were between 2,500 and 3,500 residents at any one time. Block 19, the restored section, now the only standing, was one of twenty four similarly sized and fully self-contained blocks and usually accommodated 350 people.

The prime purpose of the Reception and Training Centre was to act as a labour distribution point. Newly arrived migrants were provided with temporary accommodation, interviewed to assess their employment potential and then dispatched to jobs all over Australia.

We were the first to arrive this morning and were met by a couple in their seventies who had immigrated from Belgium in the very early 1960s and had themselves, with their two very small children, been inmates at the centre, spending about eight months there before being found employment in Melbourne. We were guided through the restored buildings by this charming man who told his own story as we went. He showed us through the large kitchen where he had gained paid kitchen hand work during his sojourn; it reminded me of the kitchen at the boarding hostel I attended during my secondary years, as did the prefabricated “huts”. (Sadly for the purpose of history but happily for subsequent boarders, my hostel was condemned and demolished almost immediately after I left.)

Here at Bonegilla’s migrant centre, there are a great number of interpretative panels, videos and other exhibits which we chose to take in having lunch. We spent some hours wandering about and absorbing the history, pleased to place our donation in the appropriate box to assist with further restoration. All the work has been undertaken by volunteers and is definitely a work in progress. Over the years more than 300,000 new Australians have come through the centre and today many or their descendants return for a dose of nostalgia.

We finally tore ourselves away and headed westwards to Wodonga where we walked up and down the main street, quiet on this Saturday afternoon before returning home. We decided we prefer Albury to Wodonga.