
About 30km north of Albury-Wodonga down on the NSW-Victoria border, Walla Walla is a town with a most interesting past. . The town was established by Germans from the Barossa Valley in South Australia in the late 1860s, and several of their buildings remain, including a granite church built in 1889. The Zion Lutheran Church, built in 1924, is still one of the denomination's largest in Australia. Nearby Morgan's Lookout - a hideout of the murderous bushranger 'Mad Dog' Morgan - is a granite rock which commands views of the Billabong Valley. The bushranger – who was also called ‘The Swagman’s Friend’ and ‘The Travellers’ Friend' – lived for about three years along the banks of the long and tortuous Billabong Creek which runs through Walla Walla. And it was in this little town that he officially began his bushranging activities by robbing one John Manson and two others on June 17, 1863. Later that year he bailed up the Stitt brothers’ Walla Walla station where he warned the owners that any mistreatment of their workers would be avenged. Two years later Dan ‘Mad Dog’ Morgan died in a hail of police bullets. More prosaically, the Walla Walla Tank Wildlife Refuge protects a variety of native wildlife.