Beechworth and Albury (Australia Part 26)

We left the Great Alpine Road and drove to Beechworth, a well-preserved historic town in Victoria. Today, there are less than 3000 residents living there, but when gold was discovered in the 1850s, the town grew rapidly.

The town's logo is a golden horseshoe. During the 1855 election campaign, one of the candidates is said to have ridden a horse with golden horseshoes. The place doesn't present itself in such exaggerated splendor to today's visitors, but we were delighted by the old houses, whose facades were not disfigured by oversized advertising signs in garish colors.

There are some historical buildings in town that can be visited. Among them are the former courthouse, the telegraph station, and the prison. Ned Kelly and his supporters were also imprisoned here for some time, as evidenced by the advertising posters for the museum, many souvenirs, and the names of some restaurants...

Our next overnight stay was in Albury, one of the largest cities in the area. Albury is located directly on the border of Victoria and New South Wales, so we changed states today - this time without a time change.

In Albury, we had planned to take a historical city tour. However, the streets didn't look very spectacular and heavy rain kept us lingering a bit longer in the restaurant after lunch. It was a very amusingly decorated 'Saloon & Diner', whose decoration consisted of pink pigs (with the fitting name 'Hog's').

Before the next rain shower, we managed to visit the library, where there was a very interesting exhibition about the history of the area, especially about one of the camps for incoming European immigrants in the 20th century.

Even afterwards, the sky was so dark and the showers were so heavy that we decided to skip the city tour and made our way from café to shopping arcade towards the hotel.

The next morning, it was cloudy but at least dry. So we finally took the historical city tour through the city center, where you could listen to information texts about various buildings with an app.

(Here, 'historical' buildings refer to anything older than 100 years.)

botanical garden

The train station was located directly on the border between Victoria and New South Wales. Since there used to be a 20-minute time difference between these two states, time information for travelers would have been rather confusing. To prevent this, there were no clocks at the train station at that time.

train station