The station acted as the transfer point for the change in rail gauge between NSW and Victoria before the introduction of a standard gauge between Sydney and Melbourne in 1962. Symmetrically designed in the grand Italianate manner, it was first used for public service on 26 February 1882. At over 450 metres, the platform is credited as one of Australia's longest.

Here you will also find the Former Albury Station Master's Residence. Designed by Henry Dean and built between 1881 and 1882, the original space featured a sitting room, dining room, scullery, pantry, kitchen, front verandah and five bedrooms upstairs. The plans for the house showed that every room had its own fireplace and, although unusual for the time, water was piped directly into the home. It has since been restored to become the Albury Visitor Information Centre in 2010.

Taking its name from its one-time owner, the building is a classic example of late colonial architecture, designed by Gordon & Gordon and with modifications over the decades including the addition of a two-storey front verandah, replete with timber floors and cast-iron fretwork. In 1912, an architect-designed two-storey rear accommodation wing was added.

The hotel served as a quarantine centre during the outbreak of the Spanish Flu in 1919. Today, it’s much more glamorous, with the building having been converted into residential apartments.

Sitting on the corner of Smollett and David streets, its Victorian and Queen Anne-style architecture – fine detailing in brickwork and terracotta elements – is quite lavish for a school. Small wonder local schoolkids refer to it as ‘The Castle’.

Take note of the unusual octagonal cupola roof topping the tower, crafted especially to hold a bell donated by a parish member.

Much of the granite and sandstone building is unchanged since the 1870s when it was blessed and opened, including its decorative door dressings. And then there are the glorious stained-glass windows imagined by John Falconer, arguably Australia’s premier stained-glass artist.

Today the space houses serviced apartments but in its heyday, it broke records as the largest wool store in inland Australia.

The 1929 red-brick building was redesigned and expanded over the decades, and by 1962 it covered some 2.75 hectares – that’s big enough to store 12,000 bales of wool. It also hosted sheep shows and trade fairs; it’s fair to say it saw a lot of action.

Large parts of modern-day Australia were made on the back of the country’s wool trade, and a stroll past the site today is a poignant reminder of just how important the industry was – and still is.

Described at the time as “an ornament to the town and a standing monument to the value of Albury granite”, while this grande dame sold privately for more than A$1.7 million in 2020, back in the day it was built at a total cost of just £3,914.

Overlooking what was once Albury’s business district, it opened its doors as The Bank of New South Wales in 1858, before serving as a stock and station agency, music academy, and part of the NSW Health Service, then reverting to a private residence.

It’s quite the monument, hewn from solid, locally quarried granite. In 1879, fire spread from the blazing Imperial Hotel next door; the smoke-stained granite can still be seen on the northern wall.

Opened by Mayor William Jones in 1877 with the planting of a single elm tree, the grounds were once fashioned to resemble the Union Jack with straight rows of elms and pines. Quite the landscaping achievement, complemented by heritage buildings like the 1890 band rotunda and the 1909 curator’s residence. History buffs can take a self-guided Heritage Walk around the gardens, discovering 19 sites of such significance.

Since then, the four-hectare grounds have been adapted to become more fluid, which means you can lose yourself on meandering trails through a cornucopia of more than 1,000 plant species.

Be sure to wander through the rainforest collection, extremely rare in gardens this far south in the country. Along your route you’ll also spot a 46m Queensland kauri and a Lone Pine from Gallipoli, planted on Anzac Day 1936.

Kids are well catered for thanks to enchanting children’s gardens, replete with trails that offer fun (yet educational) insights into flora and fauna. Expect a life-sized dinosaur with interactive speaking tubes, a fairy temple and the troll cave.

It cuts a striking form on the corner of Dean and Townsend streets, Albury’s main thoroughfares. And it steals the architectural imagination of many thanks to its details: the Victorian stuccoed façade and neo-classical style; the balustered parapet with its decorative urns.

Also known as the Moyes Building, after its former owners, the establishment has seen a whirlwind of tenants over the decades, including the Fanny Ceres Flour Mill, a chemist, stock and station agent, saddler, tailor, sports store, and the offices of prominent local architect, Louis Harrison.

Fortunately, most of the heritage buildings remain, and have been remarkably well preserved. On one corner there’s the Post Office, the other the former Globe Hotel, and on the third the legendary Mate’s Building.

In 1861, the foundations for the Albury Post Office were laid, although initially its primary function was as the city’s Telegraph Office. In 1877 it was revamped and became a Post Office, designed in the Victorian Free Classical style by James Barnet and built by Alexander Frew. If you happened to be the postmaster, you lived on-site in generous accommodations, replete with stables and a buggy house. Upstairs there were six rooms and a clock tower – the bell here tolled for the first time in 1879. The building is still owned by Australia Post and in 2011 was placed on the Commonwealth Heritage List to recognise its architectural importance.

Back in the mid-1800s, there weren’t many hotels to check into in Albury Wodonga. Enterprising John Roper – a member of Ludwig Leichhardt’s 1844 expedition from Brisbane to Port Essington, and Albury’s first Clerk of Petty Sessions from 1847 – saw the potential, particularly as the region became recognised as an important rail hub and bridge over the Murray River, linking NSW and Victoria. Roper purchased a prime piece of real estate and set about establishing an 18-room hotel, replete with stables for watering horses. He placed an eye-catching globe atop the building, which remained absent for many years, only to be re-sculpted and returned in 2021.The Former Globe Hotel's current owners have extensively renovated the building to transform it into a destination worthy of global attention.

Originally occupied by Albury’s first National School, the Mate’s Building is one of the city’s most-loved edifices. T. H. Mate purchased the site for £700 in 1860. Sadly, fire ravaged the building in the early 1900s, but it was rebuilt and replaced by the current structure in 1915, with a full second storey added in 1929. For several decades, Mate’s was the focal point of Albury retail. The building underwent major redevelopment in 1987, but is still home to boutiques – if you can tear your eyes from the glorious façade.

Colonial architect Alexander Dawson is the creative genius behind the Albury Court House, constructed in 1860 in the Classic Revival style and erected by Thomas Allen. Over the years it has been bestowed a National Trust listing – for good reason. Not only does the local grey granite used for the construction of the Palladian-style façade and portico offer a stamp of place, but inside there are remarkably well-preserved features of a bygone era, including two holding cells, an iron-railed dock and an original painted coat of arms. However, as the court house still operates (primarily in family law matters), visitors are discouraged from entering.

Next door, the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) is one of the state’s most-visited art shrines outside of Sydney. Partly occupying the city’s historic town hall (given a fresh look and extension before the gallery opened in 2015), light-filled exhibition spaces house innovative and original exhibitions, showcasing top contemporary artists from Australia and around the world.

The AMP building has a long, but not always illustrious, history in Albury Wodonga. The first incarnation was destroyed by fire in 1885. The second was knocked down in 1940 to make way for what stands today, replacing dilapidated commercial and retail shop fronts. Albury architect S. S. Oxenham was behind the design – he also imagined other prominent Albury buildings such as the Masonic Hall in Kiewa Street.

Oxenham’s Albury creation is unlike any other AMP building around Australia. For starters, it’s only three storeys, its symmetrical façade decorated with subdued spandrels to emphasise a vertical appearance. It’s also topped with statuettes and a Latin inscription that reads “Amicus Certus in re incerta”: A sure friend in an unsure world. It adjoins Amp Lane, which dazzles with a pre-programmed nightly show of lights that ends in a hanging star.

Built in 1933 by the Temperance + General (T+G) Life Assurance Society, the landmark T&G building nods to the glamour of 1930s New York. When it was erected, it was considered a “skyscraper” – its stepped pyramidal summit is only four storeys tall, but was an addition to the then-existing three-storey building of shops, offices and a billiard parlour. Total height: 26 metres. Total Art Deco allure: immeasurable. To this day, the T&G Building remains remarkably well preserved. It’s made even more special by the fact that the Albury building was one of only a few of its kind constructed in regional areas of Australia.

The Albury Telegraph Office is an imposing Classic Revival building that has graced the eastern end of Albury’s civic block since 1886. While it began its life as the Telegraph Station, then telephone exchange, its generous proportions soon became a magnet for creatives. By the early 1900s, the building served as a trade school and a museum, before becoming home to the Riverina Music Centre in 1981, and then the Murray Conservatorium – its current tenants – in 1983. The NSW Heritage Council placed a permanent conservation order on the building in 1981 because of its importance to Albury’s architectural heritage.

500 Dean Street began its life as the Union Bank – and has been a shrine to money ever since, changing hands to become a branch of the ANZ before the current BankWAW Credit Union tenants took over. But aside from all those dollars inside, the building’s real appeal lies in its design. It was constructed in Queen Anne Federation-style by Frew and Logan in 1907; back then, it featured a small banking chamber and strongroom, with a manager’s residence on the second floor. Before its function as a place of commerce, the site was a popular campsite for travelling side shows, and was later purchased by Joe ‘Walnut’ Ormiston, who earned his nickname from the enormous walnut tree that once stood here.

Among Albury’s best-known landmarks, the Colonial Mutual Life (CML) Building is notable not only for its architecture but for its role in war history. The building was designed by prominent architect Nahum Barnet, who was regarded as Melbourne’s most innovative producer of commercial buildings during the Federation period. It went up in 1925, and was extended in 1938. And its distinctive clock tower has since helped to define Albury’s main street. The clock tower also played its part during WWII, being used by Albury’s Volunteer Air Observers Corps as an observation post looking for unidentified or unwanted aircraft.

Images first flickered onto the silver screen of the Regent Cinemas in 1927. Influences from the Art Deco style can be seen on the exterior Dean Street and David Street facades, while inside elaborate decorative plaster mouldings exude the grandeur and elegance of the roaring 20s. The theatre is listed as part of the Heritage Trust of Australia.

The Australian Building was originally the site of Thomas Delaney’s Bedding Factory, which operated for 20 years until Betro Abikhair built the present store in 1991. Designed in the Commercial Federation style, key features include the detailed parapet and the Australian coat of arms on the corner façade. Now over a century old, ‘The Big Store’ remains one of Albury’s important architectural characters.