The town is located adjacent to the Murray Valley Highway, 429 kilometres (267 mi) north east of the state capital, Melbourne.

Part of the Shire of Towong local government area, at the 2006 census Cudgewa and the surrounding district had a population of 237.

The Victorian side of the Upper Murray area was part of the traditional country of the Wolgal People.

[3] First Nation people of this area had excellent engineering skills that was shown in their erection of fish traps on Cudgewa Creek and other local streams.

Unfortunately at the time, "this constructions were too often credited to 'chance', instead of being identified as man-made structures erected according to strict laws which have evolved, within the various tribes, over period of centuries'(we now know it is over periods of millennia), as written by Jean Carmody in her 'Early days of the Upper Murray'.