Free camping in Albury CBD

Fancy being able to free camp right in the heart of a major rural city. That’s exactly what we’ve been doing for a couple of days. Albury City provides free camping to self-contained vehicles only in one of their large all day carparks right behind the SS&A Club. It is a perfect location for a short stop in the city as you can walk to most places.

Camped in the SS&A Club Carpark in downtown Albury, NSW

Dean Street is the main shopping street in Albury and is only one block away. Like many main streets Dean Street has been affected by the construction of shopping centres and Albury has a few of those around it’s CBD. Sadly this leaves quite a few of the shops in the Main Street empty and looking for tenants. Albury is a large city and has all the usual stores you would expect a large city to have like Myers, KMart, Target and specialty stores.

The Albury Botanic Gardens are a few blocks walk away and well worth the visit. They are really beautiful. The Children’s Garden had us wishing we had some grandchildren with us so we could check it out. It looked like a really fun place for children.

One of the newest additions to the CBD in Albury is Harris Farm Markets and what a find! They are fabulous. We visited a couple of times during our stay to stock up on delicious pate, cheeses, fruit and vege and smoked salmon. They have one of the best selections of deli goods that I’ve seen in a long time. We will be right for snacks and lunches for the next few days.

Albury is a major rural city in NSW and has a population of almost 50,000. Just across the Murray River is its twin city of Wodonga and it has a population of approximately 43,000.

The area is part of the Wiradjuri Nation, one of the largest Aboriginal territories. The Wiradjuri Nation stretches out to Deniliquin, Griffith, Condolbolin, Peak Hill, Narrandera, Wagga Wagga and up into the Snowy Mountains at Tumbarumba.

Hume & Hovel came across the Murray River near Albury in their 1824 explorations and they named the river the Hume River after Hume’s father. Funnily enough Charles Sturt also came across the river in his exploration in 1830 and, not realising it was the same river, named it the Murray River which eventually became the name for the whole river.

European settlement began and the town plan was gazetted in 1839. The CBD has many fine examples of buildings from the 1800’s and many are Heritage listed. The CBD also has some beautiful examples of the Californian Bungalow style of home. These were mainly built in Australia between the two World Wars. Our dear friends Peter & Michele live in a classic California Bungalow.