13/10/2026
To celebrate 20 years of Write Around the Murray on Saturday 12 September we held a showcase featuring original music, poetry and stories, including this one below by our Festival Director, Aimee Chan, which was performed supported by the Stereo Stories band.
"ALBURY, 2020
The first time I saw one, I couldn’t stop laughing. It was perched crookedly on the edge of Nouriel Park, just past the Causeway. One of those large electronic street signs. And the words said something to the effect of, “From Wodonga, turn back. Albury residents only.”
We slowed down the car so I could take a picture and sent it to my sister. “How hilarious,” I texted. “Gotta keep those Wodonga bogans out of Albury!”
Before 2020, we couldn’t imagine any border on the Border other than our beloved river.
We are technically two towns but everyone around Australia knows us as AlburyWodonga. Two words mashed into one. Which city is in which state? Who knows? Who cares? It’s all the same. AlburyWodonga.
But then the masks arrived. And the social distancing. Police leant into car windows to ask for vaccination records. Suddenly you needed a permit to get from one twin city to another and that large electronic street sign didn’t seem quite so hilarious anymore.
And then they sent in the defence forces.
Soldiers, dressed in fatigues, faces covered, asking for justifications for why we needed to see our friends in NSW. Go to the dentist in Victoria. Pick up kids from school in another state.
It was like something from a Hollywood movie: Outbreak, the one with Dustin Hoffman. Vehicles in army camouflage blocking off roads to stop Victorians from coming to New South Wales and the other way round. It felt too invasive, too militant for our little old AlburyWodonga.
Before the COVID outbreak, the two councils had been pushing a hard marketing message of Two Cities, One Community. But as the lockdowns continued and the pandemic hit its second year, the queues to cross state lines got longer and longer. So people began to stick to their own sides of the Border.
Physically we were Two Cities for the first time in a long time.
But we tried really hard to stay as one community.
Everything moved online.
We learnt how to use Zoom and QR codes.
We recorded ourselves singing in quarantine, an online choir that made national news.
And we tried to learn dances that we hilariously posted on our social media, like the Fleming family in Ireland who went viral trying to teach their delightfully uncoordinated Da the choreography for Blinding Lights by The Weeknd.
Meanwhile, back in AlburyWodonga, creatives and small businesses donated their time to make a tribute exhibition and podcast about the Black Summer firefighters.
HotHouse Theatre offered a virtual creative program to occupy unemployed artists.
Galah Bar went OnAir.
The Museum in this very space created virtual walk throughs of its exhibitions.
Even Write Around the Murray moved completely online offering stories, talks and even a WAM Slam you could watch on split screen in your pyjamas at home, sending out vital waves and comments in appreciation.
In large part, it was the arts and our creative community that kept us connected and got us through. It was the arts that kept us truly two cities but one community.
Thankfully the days where we need to take firewood and slabs of soft drink to the defence forces on the Albury Wodonga border are finished. No more physical barriers on the Murray.
But now there are other forces trying to keep us apart. Censorship, social media cancellations, funding cuts. These threaten the arts and, therefore, our social cohesion.
At a time when international wars dominate headlines and a cost of living crisis looms large, it is still the arts that helps sustain us.
Music, poetry, theatre, film, dance and books are what is getting us through.
It’s the stories they tell that help us remember and process our past.
It’s the stories they tell that help us get through today.
It’s these stories that ensure we can continue to be a great big global society of many cities, one community."
Story by Aimee Chan Author
The WAM 20th Festival Celebration Showcase was supported by Creative Australia.
