Albury was founded mainly as a customs post when Victoria and New South Wales were independent colonies which imposed tariffs on each other's goods. The railway changeover at the Albury station was the busiest in Australia, and the longest railway platform in Australia was built to deal with the traffic. Despite this, the nearby city of Corowa[?] was the site of several conferences pivotal in Australia's federation into a nation. Sited on the main Melbourne-Sydney highway, Albury remains a major transit point of interstate commerce. It is the only town on the Hume Highway that remains to be bypassed.
As well as serving the agricultural communities surrounding the area, the city is the home of a large pulp mill which processes the pine logs planted in the mountains to the east, an engineering plant which produces automatic transmissions for cars, and other smaller secondary industries.
Albury's proximity to Wodonga has spurred several efforts to achieve some kind of municipal governmental union. See Albury-Wodonga.
Albury is the birthplace of tennis superstar, Margaret Smith Court.
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