About Lifeline Mountains to Murray

Lifeline Albury Wodonga has been providing a free and confidential telephone counselling service to this region for 25 years. We are one of a national network of 42 Lifeline Centres covering all parts of Australia.

Lifeline provides a national 24 hour a day 365 days per year telephone counselling service.

Lifeline catchment areas are directly related to telephone area codes. Therefore anyone who calls from within the 0357 and the 0358 areas of Victoria, and 0260 and 0269 areas of NSW, will automatically dial into our Albury Wodonga centre. This geographically represents north and north-east Victoria from the border almost to Melbourne, and most of the Riverina area.

Our workforce of telephone counsellors are volunteers who give their time freely and are committed to responding to people in need. We currently have telephone counsellors from a number of shires from the north-eastern region of Victoria, and southern NSW, as well as the regional centre of Albury Wodonga, operating the service. For people to qualify as Lifeline Telephone Counsellors they must undertake a 68 hour course over a 4 month period, which meets national standards set by Lifeline Australia. Once they are qualified they receive on-going training and support to assist them in their demanding work.

The range of issues our counsellors are called about include relationship challenges, family and parenting issues, marriage breakdown, custody and access issues, mental health issues, social isolation, depression, bullying, child abuse, sexual assault, gambling, drug abuse, loss and grief, etc. It is a wide range of issues with each situation significant enough for the individual to seek confidential counselling and support.

We are essentially a volunteer organisation. As well as our Telephone Counsellors we also have volunteers who operate our warehouse and op shop in Wilson St. Albury. We are an incorporated not for profit organisation governed by a board of directors, who are also volunteers.