THEN AND NOW: Wodonga memories of yabbies, army jeeps and trains

I was in the Bandiana Scouts and we had many camps in the hills well in behind Bill Sleebes' property where the old reservoir was. We were taken in by army jeeps with trailers on the back, it was a very rough track, we thought it was great to be taken in by jeep.

In the summer the creek still flowed and there was a deep pool to swim in. We had to make our camp site fire safe. We caught large yabbies in the creek and trapped rabbits and ate them.

In the mid 1940s and 1950s Wodonga had two passenger bus companies, being Mylons and O'Neills. Mylons ran services between Albury and Wodonga every half hour from 6am to 11pm.

I can remember the railways had a loop line near Maloneys Hill. It was used to turn the long trains around, especially the Spirit of Progress steam train which came into Albury station front first, then it was pushed backwards to Wodonga cleaning sheds to be cleaned overnight. Each morning at 6am it was pushed out the loop line, which was part of the line that ran to Bandiana, Tallangatta and Shelley, and pushed backward to Albury station, ready for its daily trip to Melbourne which took about three hours. It was the pride of the Victorian railways and had a rounded end on the last carriage, which was the buffet car. It looked very impressive travelling at high speed.

Sydney Street/High Street had the main Sydney to Melbourne railway line crossing through the main street. No. 2 Signal Box was there and the operator wound a 6' diameter wheel to close and open the gates to stop the road traffic while the trains passed through, this caused a bank up of impatient motorists. It took 50 odd years for the rail bypass to cross the flood plain north of Wodonga.

Manual gates closed the road for the Tallangatta line on the north side of the main track and the NSW gauge on the south side of the main Victorian line. Victorian and NSW had two different width lines.

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