The town is in the Shire of Campaspe local government area, between Kyabram and Echuca, 225 kilometres (140 mi) north of the state capital, Melbourne.

One such soldier settler was John McEwen— later Prime Minister of Australia—who bought a block at Tongala and married a local, Anne McLeod, in the town in 1921.

[4] In 2012, photographer Shaun C Mackrell undertook a year-long project to document and record the people of Tongala and their stories.

[8] Nestlé proceeded to invest $17 million back in to the factory in late 2011, constructing a new liquid manufacturing facility that would go on to produce part of their Health Science range consisting of ready-to-drink medical supplements.

A spokesperson for Nestlé cited a change in consumer purchasing behavior towards tinned milk and increasing competition from cheap imports[10] Sunrice operates a CopRice plant that employs thirty staff in a state of the art stockfeed mill, established in 1989, with a capacity to produce up to 100,000 tonnes of stockfeed.