Border closure with NSW not the first in Victoria’s history
When Victoria’s border with NSW closes at midnight on Tuesday, history will repeat itself. As the Spanish flu spread from Victoria to NSW in 1919, border towns suddenly became home to hundreds of people locked out of their state.
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The Victorian and NSW border has been snapped shut once before — when Spanish flu hit more than 100 years ago.
In November 1918, as flu cases rose, the states and the commonwealth agreed not to close borders. But after cases spread from Victoria to NSW in January 1919 the deal fell apart and closures followed.
The border town of Albury suddenly became home to hundreds of people locked out of their state.
Albury & District Historical Society president Greg Ryan said the Spanish flu arrived in Melbourne and spread to Albury through train travel, but it was the death of a World War I survivor that captured the heart of the town.
“We had our first death in February (1919) including a chap who had survived being gassed in World War I,” he said. “He got back to Australia and married his sweetheart in January, went to Melbourne on his honeymoon, came back, and became the second to die locally. Police then began to guard the border including river crossings. Those who were stranded in Albury were quarantined at the sports ground camp.”
A postcard mailed during the height of the pandemic in Albury captured the quarantine camps established to test and monitor travellers before they could enter NSW.
The postcard read: “Inside camp, attendants and waiters came and went freely and temperatures were exquisitely took twice a day.”
Wearing face masks and free inoculations became normal for the Albury community.
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