West Wodonga

West Wodonga, 250 km north-east of Melbourne, is a large suburb adjoining Wodonga along Melrose Drive. It was the product of the Albury-Wodonga Development Project of the 1970s and 1980s.

Before 1972 West Wodonga was a place of scattered habitations passed through on the way to a drive-in picture theatre. West Wodonga was so far away from urban Wodonga that a State primary school (1870) named Wodonga West was 700 metres away from the new suburb’s eastern boundary. The Albury-Wodonga Development Corporation proposed massive urban growth areas around Wodonga, with the Moorefield Park Road precinct, West Wodonga as a centrepiece. The precinct ultimately housed the LaTrobe University campus (1988) and the Wodonga TAFE college (1987).

West Wodonga’s housing growth provoked four new schools in six years: Catholic primary and secondary schools (1973, c1978) and State primary and secondary schools (1979, 1976). A sewerage works program took ten years (1984-94) to complete for the greatly expanded Wodonga. A Hume Freeway by-pass was needed, and the route across the Wodonga flats went through the golf course. Wodonga golf club moved to the Fell Timber Creek wetland in West Wodonga.

Birallee shopping centre on Melrose Drive opened in 1985, adjoined by a sports stadium and sports fields further west. They are close to the middle of the whole of the Wodonga urban area, but several kilometres car travel from the outer west of West Wodonga.

Census data for West Wodonga has been: