Walla Walla

Walla Walla or Wallawalla (English: ) is a town in Greater Hume Shire Council in New South Wales, Australia.

Walla Walla or Wallawalla (English: ) is a town in Greater Hume Shire Council in New South Wales, Australia. It is about 39 kilometres (24 mi) north of Albury-Wodonga and 130 kilometres (81 mi) south of Wagga Wagga.

Walla Walla had a population of 581 people in 2006 and has the largest Lutheran church in New South Wales.Walla Walla has an elevation of 196 metres (643 ft) above sea level. In summer Walla Walla has an average high of 31 °C (88 °F) and a low of 13 °C (55 °F), and during winter it has a high of 12 °C (54 °F) and a low of 2 °C (36 °F), although maximum temperatures can reach the mid-40s °C (mid-110s °F) and the area often experiences frosts during winter.Until 2016 it was the home of the Walla Walla Football Club which played as a stand alone team in the Hume Football League until having to merge with Rand & Walbundrie due to lack of players. Walla Walla has many other sports available such as tennis, lawn bowls, croquet, cricket and a local swimming pool.

Walla Walla is also the home of St Paul's College, the only Lutheran secondary school in NSW. The school offers an equine program, with many students keeping horses in the adjacent equine centre, as well as agricultural studies.Boarding students are drawn from communities within the Greater Hume Shire, the Riverina, North Eastern Victoria and further afield from the cities of Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.

The Walla Walla area was home to the Wiradjuri aboriginals who inhabited this area for many thousands of years prior to European settlement.The explorers Hume and Hovell passed through the area in late 1824 noting its potential for grazing livestock. Squatters first arrived in 1834 and four stations, including "Round Hill" and "Walla Walla" were established by 1845. During the 1860s the bushranger Dan "Mad Dog" Morgan frequented the area holding up the Round Hill Station at nearby Morven. He also established a lookout at a granite outcrop 6 km north of Walla Walla adjacent to the Walla Walla Station and Billabong Creek.Walla Walla was established in 1869 when 56 settlers of German extraction moved from their home in the Barossa Valley of South Australia in the search for farming land. At that time South Australian farmland was in short supply and the New South Wales government was releasing tracts of fertile land at relatively cheap prices. In all, 56 people made the trek in 14 covered wagons and 2 spring carts, leaving their hometown of Ebenezer in October 1868. This group was led by Father Klemke and it comprised the families of Michael Wenke, Andreas Mickan and Andreas Lieschke; as well as two Klemke families, the Fischer, Terlich and Hennersdorf families and two single men in Ferdinand Schmidt and Wilhelm Luhrs. Ethnically, most of these families belonged to a minority group known as Wends or Sorbs and some had only recently emigrated from the North Eastern German States. Although these settlers first named the township Ebenezer after their hometown in South Australia, its name was changed to Walla Walla (Aboriginal for "place of many rocks") because another township with the same name existed in New South Wales. This was neither the first nor the last trek by German South Australians to the Riverina with other settlements established nearby at Jindera, Bethel, Gerogery, Wallendool (Alma Park), Dudal-Cooma (Pleasant Hills), Mangoplah, Edgehill and Henty.Walla Walla Post Office opened on 1 February 1878.The Walla Walla Hotel was opened in the early 20th century by Mr Fredrick Voss, the original publican.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Walla Walla was charactered by its close-knit community which contributed to its preservation of the German language and the old ways.Although the First World War fostered a sense of nationalism (albeit strongly allied to the British Empire)

this period was a challenging time for the Walla Walla community due to its ethnicity and the political issues of conscription and disenfranchisement from the electoral roll. According to one view, Walla Walla was reported as 'Berlin' and a 'hotbed of disloyalty'. In all, four local residents, including two Justices of the Peace and members of the Culcairn Shire Council were interned in the Holsworthy Concentration Camp. Tellingly, the honour board at the Walla Walla Soldiers Memorial Hall describes the war as one against 'Prussian Militarism' rather than Germany.With the outbreak of the Second World War, tensions evident during the First World War did not take long to resurface. This time the attention of the authorities was directed toward the Lutheran pastors in the region, rather than its civic leaders. This was the case because conscription was no longer the issue that it had been in the First World War and some Lutheran pastors had shown pro-German sympathies with the resurgence of Germany. These pastors (including Pastor JTP Stolz from Walla Walla) were questioned and their activities were monitored.