Bathurst, New South Wales

Two physical components comprise the Bathurst region; the Bathurst Basin and the Tablelands areas. They are drained by the Macquarie, Turon, Fish and Campbells Rivers to the north and Abercrombie and Isabella Rivers to the south. The central basin area of the Bathurst area is mainly granite soils while in the north area sandstone, conglomerates, greywacke, siltstones, limestones and minor volcanos predominate. The south is more complex geology with siltstones, sandstones, greywacke, shales and chert, basalt and granite intrusions and embedded volcanic and limestones. Underlying Bathurst is the dominant feature of Bathurst granite (intruded in the Devonian period) and at Mount Panorama and Mount Stewart basalt occurs.[4]

Topography of the region ranges from slightly undulating to rough and very steep country, about 30 km to the east of Bathurst is the folded and faulted sedimentary and metamorphosed formations of the Great Dividing Range which runs roughly north–south.[8]

William Street; one of the main streets of Bathurst

Bathurst's central business district (CBD) is located on William, George, Howick, Russell, and Durham Streets. The CBD is about 25 hectares (62 acres) in area and covers two city blocks. Banking, government services, shopping centres, retail shops, a park (shown) and monuments are in this area.

Bathurst has retained a mix of main street shopping along with enclosed shopping centres within the CBD, unlike other towns where the CBD focus has split between main street and new shopping centre developments located in the suburbs. Within the CBD lies Kings Parade; this is a park setting with several memorials of people and events in history. It is a popular location for locals to meet. Keppel Street is Bathurst's second commercial shopping area, removed from the CBD by two blocks to the south. This area developed once the railway arrived in 1876.

The main suburbs of Bathurst are: Kelso, Eglinton, West Bathurst, Llanarth, South Bathurst, Gormans Hill, Windradyne, Windradyne Heights and Abercrombie Estate. One of the newer suburbs is Marsden Estate, in Kelso.[9]

Autumn foliage in central Bathurst during May

Due to its elevation, Bathurst has an oceanic climate (Cfb), according to Köppen climate classification. Bathurst is in Australia's cool temperate climate zone which is defined as having mild to warm summers and cool to cold winters.[10][11] Regular summer thunderstorms are common, resulting from the flat plains country to the west, leading into the mountainous nature of the country around Bathurst and assisting the development of storm cells. These storms rarely strike the city and instead often move either in a south east or north east direction away from Bathurst[12] Bathurst gets 106.9 clear days annually.[13]

In winter, light to moderate snowfalls occur each year on the high country around Bathurst, whilst snow is relatively rare in the city itself due to its low elevation at a northern latitude. On 5 July 1900, Bathurst received a freak snowfall measuring at 68 centimetres (27 in) in the main street.[14] Bathurst is relatively dry year round, as it lay in a rain shadow on account of its sheltered valley location flanked by hills and ranges on all sides.[15]

On 11 February 2017, Bathurst Ag recorded a new record high temperature of 41.5 °C (106.7 °F),[16] although temperatures of 40 °C (104 °F) are exceedingly rare for Bathurst. There is a reading of 44.7 °C (112.5 °F) on 12 January 1878 at the gaol, however such a reading may have been subject to overexposure. The highest minimum temperatures on record are 28.1 °C (82.6 °F) on 14 January 1939, and 27.8 °C (82.0 °F) on 20 November 1904. The lowest recorded temperature was −10.6 °C (12.9 °F) on 31 July 1873; and the lowest maximum temperature was an extraordinary −0.8 °C (30.6 °F) on 18 June 1877, which is the only known daily maximum below 0 °C (32 °F) to have occurred in a major Australian city.

The area around what is now called Bathurst was originally occupied by the Muurrai clan of the Wiradjuri people. It was known as dalman or place of plenty. Yam fields were cultivated on the fertile floodplain and fire-stick farming was utilised to maintain grassy pasture for wild game. The Wiradjuri were noted by early colonists for their neat mandiyaba or possum-skin cloaks which were decorated with artistic etchings known as burwurr.[17] British colonial settlement into this area began in 1815 and was expanded in 1818 when Governor Lachlan Macquarie removed restrictions that limited colonial settlements. Once these restrictions were removed the Wiradjuri people suffered major dislocation, death and disruption to their way of life.[18]

George Evans monument

The government surveyor, George Evans, was the first European to sight the Bathurst Plains in 1813, following the first successful British crossing of the Blue Mountains in the same year. In 1814, Governor Lachlan Macquarie approved an offer by William Cox to build a road crossing the Blue Mountains, from Emu Plains to the Bathurst Plains. This road was 3.7 metres (12 ft) wide and 163.3 kilometres (101+1⁄2 mi) long, built between 18 July 1814 and 14 January 1815 using 5 freemen, 30 convict labourers and 8 soldiers as guards. Twenty convicts and soldiers remained stationed at terminus of the road at the Bathurst Plains. These were the first non-Indigenous residents of what was to become Bathurst but was simply referred to until May 7 of that year as the Grand Depot. Governor Macquarie surveyed the finished road in April 1815, travelling along it to the Grand Depot with his wife and an entourage of 50 officials, soldiers and servants.[19][17]

John Lewin, The Plains, Bathurst, watercolour drawing, ca. 1815, State Library of New South Wales

On 7 May 1815, Governor Macquarie raised the British flag at the Grand Depot, ordered a ceremonial volley to be fired and named the military outpost as Bathurst after the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl Bathurst.[20] Bathurst thereby became the oldest inland British settlement in Australia. William Cox, who was appointed the first Commandant of Bathurst, and William Lawson were promised large grants of land in the area and soon sent herds of their livestock to the region.

The Bathurst region was opened up to wider British settlement in 1818 when Macquarie granted ten men 20 hectares (50 acres) of land each. These men were William Lee, Richard Mills, Thomas Kite, Thomas Swanbrooke, George Cheshire, John Abbott, John and James Blackman, John Neville and John Godden. These grants were located at what is now White Rock and Kelso. In 1818, Governor Macquarie stated in his diary:

This morning I inspected 10 new settlers for Bathurst. I have agreed to grant each 50 acres of land, a servant, a cow, four bushels [141 litres] of wheat, an allotment in the new town, and to receive into the King's Store at Bathurst all the Wheat they can grow for the first 12 months.[21]

Bathurst, painted by Joseph Backler c.1847–1857

In the early years of settlement, Bathurst was a base for many of the early explorers of the NSW inland, including George Evans in 1815, John Oxley in 1817–1818, Allan Cunningham in 1823, and Thomas Mitchell during the 1830s.[22][23]

In 1819, frontier conflicts between local Wiradjuri groups and encroaching settlers began when Aboriginal people were shot and others mauled by the colonists' dogs. When Governor Brisbane opened the Bathurst area to wider colonisation from 1822, the subsequent large influx of graziers led to a more intense conflict over land and resources known as the Bathurst War.[17] The Wiradjuri, led by leaders such as Windradyne, continued to resist settler encroachment until martial law was declared in August 1824, after which settlers conducted several raids against Wiradjuri settlements; colonists such as Theophilus Chamberlain, the superintendent for William Cox, perpetrated several massacres. In response, Major James Thomas Morisset was appointed commandant of Bathurst to restore order, conducting several sweeps across the landscape. Martial law ended in December 1824 as the remaining Wiradjuri were forced to make peace with the colonial authorities.[24][17][25][26]

Painting of Edward Hammond Hargraves, who is credited with the first discovery of payable gold near Bathurst in 1851

Flecks of gold were first discovered in the Fish River in February 1823, but it was 12 February 1851 in a Bathurst Hotel when Edward Hargraves announced the discovery of payable gold. Soon, gold was found at Ophir (later Sofala) and Hill End in the 1850s.

Hill End, called 'Bald Hills' in 1850, 'Forbes' in 1860 and finally Hill End in 1862 was part of the Tambaroora district. At its peak had a population of 7 000 people. Hill End's fame is the finding of the 'Holtermann Specimen (Correctly the Beyers Holtermann Specimen)' on 20 October 1871 being the largest single mass of gold ever discovered in the world, a record that still stands today. Found in 1872 this single mass of quartz and gold weighed 630 lbs and when crushed produced and est. of 3000 troy oz (205 lbs or 93 kg) of gold, thus processed held more gold then the processed gold from largest nugget ever found, that being the Welcome Stranger from the Victorian Goldfields. Holtermann recognizing the significance of the find attempted to preserve it by buying it from the Company of which he was one of a number of directors. His efforts were in vain. It is reported that a larger mass was discovered a few days later in the same mine but was broken up underground. Absolutely reliant on Gold, the towns decline was dramatic once the Gold ran out before the 1900s. Photo: Hotlermann with the Beyers-Holterman Specimen[27]

In the 1860s, the town of Bathurst began to boom. Bathurst was to become the first gold centre of Australia. The nearby gold localities would transport their gold to Bathurst[22] then to Sydney. The mail and gold transport coaches became an obvious target for bushrangers, which became a major problem for the authorities. The Ribbon Gang and the Bathurst Rebellion occurred in 1830, when a large group of over 80 convicts roamed the Bathurst district. They were eventually captured and charged with murder, bushranging and horse-thieving. On 2 November 1830, ten members of the Ribbon Boys were hanged in Bathurst for their crimes. The site of the first and largest public hanging in Bathurst is still marked by the laneway sign Ribbon Gang Lane in the CBD.[28] Ben Hall, who became a notorious bushranger, was married in St Michael's Church at Bathurst in 1856. In October 1863, a gang of five (including Hall) raided Bathurst, robbing a jeweller's shop, bailed up the Sportsmans Arms Hotel and tried to steal a racehorse. They returned three days later and held up more businesses. John Peisley, another bushranger, was tried and hanged for murder at Bathurst Gaol in 1862.[29]

Abercrombie House; grand estates and residences were built by early settlers in Bathurst, especially during the height of the Gold Rushes

Bathurst's economy was transformed by the discovery of gold in 1851. One illustration of the prosperity gold brought to Bathurst is the growth and status of hotels and inns. The first licensed inn within the township was opened in 1835, the Highland Laddie. At the peak of hotel activity in 1875, coinciding with the gold rush period, there were 61 operating concurrently. A total of 89 hotel locations have been identified in the town of Bathurst, with 112 operating in the immediate district during the course of the history in Bathurst. Initially many pubs were simply a cottage with stables. As prosperity increased during the gold rush, the Hotels became typical of architecture of pubs known today.[30]

William Street in 1870

The Cobb & Co business was a horse drawn coaching transport business originally established in Victoria but relocated to Bathurst in 1862 to follow the gold rush. The business provided gold escorts, mail services and passenger services to the towns and rural settlements.[31] Cobb & Co. coaches were constructed in the coaching workshops located in Bathurst and the Bathurst Information Centre contains a restored Cobb & Co. coach.[32][33]

Bathurst District Hospital

Bathurst later became the centre of an important coal-mining and manufacturing region. The Main Western railway line from Sydney reached Bathurst in 1876. From that time, the town became an important railway centre with workshops, crew base with locomotive depot and track and signal engineering offices. It remains today as the railway regional engineering headquarters with a large rail component manufacturing facility.

The heritage listed Bathurst Courthouse, a predominant landmark of the city centre, was constructed in 1880 based on designs by the New South Wales Colonial and Government architects, James Barnet and Walter Liberty Vernon.[34][35]

In 1885, Bathurst had a population of about 8,000 and an additional 20,000 people in the district. The town in 1885 was a hub for stores such as E.G. Webb & Co. with supplies and distribution occurring throughout large parts of western NSW and into Queensland and South Australia.[22]

Rotunda at Machattie Park

This period is characterised by periods of slow to moderate population growth, with industrial and education industries developing and technology and services delivered to the town. Several major infrastructure developments arrive such as distributed town gas, electricity, town water supplies, and a sewage treatment system. Town gas had arrived in Bathurst courtesy of a private venture in 1872, with the Council providing a competing network from 1888. On 30 June 1914, the Council purchased the Wark Bros gas system and combined the gas networks. The old gasworks plant on Russell Street (now out of use) was built in 1960. In 1987 natural gas arrived via a new 240 km spur pipeline off the Moomba to Sydney pipeline.[36] The early part of the century saw electricity arrive initially for street lighting; the city converted from gas street lighting to electric lighting on 22 December 1924, when 370 electric lights at a cost of £40,000 were switched on.[37] Lighting spread along streets through to 1935, over time to businesses and finally private houses. Sewage treatment was an early infrastructure project funded by the state government and built in 1915.[38]^: 59 Water supply started with private wells in backyards. Eventually a waterworks was built to the south of the town on the river with the water pumped through piping laid progressively to the businesses and private dwellings. In 1931, work started on the 1,700 ML Winburndale Dam project to gravity feed water through a wood stave pipe laid to the town. The scheme was opened by the Premier of New South Wales on 7 October 1933. Later, a new larger water supply dam was built on the Campbells River. Originally known as the Campbell River Dam scheme and later renamed the Ben Chifley Dam after the late Prime Minister Ben Chifley of Bathurst. It was opened in November 1956. The Ben Chifley Dam received a major storage upgrade designed to meet the cities needs to 2050; the work was completed in 2001 increasing the capacity by 30% to 30,800 megalitres (6.8×10⁹ imp gal; 8.1×10⁹ US gal).[39]

Bathurst district ambulance station

An ambulance service commenced on 6 June 1925 with a new Hudson ambulance. A new ambulance station was opened 2 March 1929 and is still used by the NSW Ambulance Service. Motor cars were becoming common in the early 20th century and the need for road service patrols commenced in 1927, provided by the NRMA using a motorcycle/sidecar response vehicle. The early electronic media age arrived with the opening of commercial radio station 2BS on 1 January 1937. Bathurst Aerodrome was opened in 1942, initially to benefit the war effort providing parking for aircraft overflowing from Richmond air force base.[40] The first commercial airline service departed for Sydney on 16 December 1946.[41]

A famous Australian brand name of frozen foods began in Bathurst. Robert Gordon Edgell arrived in Bathurst in 1902. By 1906, he was growing pears, apples and asparagus and experimenting with canning and preserving fruit and vegetables, eventually opening a small cannery in 1926. In 1930, he formed the company Gordon Edgell & Sons which became, and still is, a famous Australian food brand, now owned by Simplot.

Many attempts were made to start a university college, the earliest attempts were 1912 through to 1947 when real progress was made with plans for a state teachers college. The first intake of teacher students came at the beginning of 1951 with the official opening on 9 November 1951. The college has transformed over time into the Mitchell College of Advanced Education on 1 January 1970. The college grew and ultimately became the Charles Sturt University on 19 July 1989.[42]

Bathurst was one of the locations to campaign to be the site of the new federal capital. In an essay prepared by a journalist with the Bathurst Times, Price Warung,[43] in 1901 to promote Bathurst's candidacy, he responds to the federal committees key requirements for the capital to have: "centrality and accessibility of situation, salubrity, and capacity for impregnable defence".[44] The proposed site for the capital city would have been slightly north-west of Bathurst, straddling the Macquarie River, at the locality known as Elrington.[45]

Post-war migrants at the Bathurst Migrant Centre, 1949

An Australian Army camp was established at Bathurst in early 1940, intended for the Second Australian Imperial Force's 1st Armoured Division; however, it was later converted to an infantry training centre due to the unsuitability of the closely settled area to armoured training. Following World War II, the camp was converted to a migrant reception and training centre, with the first group of migrants arriving in 1948. At times the centre had up to 10,000 residents at one time,[22] taking in a total of around 100,000 migrants before its closure in 1952, when Villawood Migrant Centre was opened. Officially Bathurst Migrant Reception and Training Centre, it was usually referred to as Bathurst Migrant Camp.[46]

Bathurst's population has had rapid growth periods throughout its history; during the mid to late 19th century gold rush period, then post World War 2 when migrants from the war ravaged countries were settled in the area and returning soldiers were offered farming land, and at the start of this century has been another fast growth period corresponding in part to Sydney's congestion. Other periods have seen a slightly declining population, including the decade around the 1900s and during the 1960s. The following chart illustrates the growth from 1856 to recent times.[47]

Bathurst population growth 1856 to 2005

Local government was trialled in the new Colony with a 'Bathurst and Carcoar District Council' established on 12 August 1843,[38]^: 66 Bathurst was proclaimed a town in 1852 and incorporated as a borough in 1862, next a municipality in 1883,[4] then gazetted a city in on 20 March 1885.[22] the same day as Sydney was declared a city.[4] Bathurst Regional Council was formed on 26 May 2004 following the amalgamation of the Bathurst City Council, most of Evans Shire and a small amount of land formerly included in Oberon Shire.[76]

The Electoral district of Bathurst is the state seat in the NSW Parliament. This seat covers the major centres of Bathurst and Lithgow, and all or part of Bathurst, Blayney, Cabonne, Lithgow, Mid-Western and Oberon local government areas.

Since 1859, Bathurst has existed as an electoral district in the NSW Parliament. Prior to 1856, Bathurst was a part of the Electoral district of Western Boroughs. Before the 1920s, Bathurst was a single member constituency, in the 1920s it became a multimember district with proportional representation. During the middle part of the 20th century the seat was marginal between Labor and Country Parties, from 1981 when the strong Labor town of Lithgow moved from Blue Mountains to Bathurst, the seat was dominated by Labor, except for 1988 when it was won by the Liberal Party for one 3-year term,[77] and the 2011 election when Paul Toole of the National Party won the seat.[78]

Bathurst is currently within the federal electoral district of Calare which includes a large part of western NSW from Lithgow in the east to Tullamore in the west. Prior to the 2010 election, Bathurst was within the Macquarie federal electoral district which was more easterly based including the Blue Mountains area with Bathurst as the western boundary of the district.[79]

Private sector employers with large workforces in Bathurst (according to statistics published in 2009) include Devro, an international company that produces food casing products and Mars Petcare manufacturing plant are the single largest private employers of labour. Companies such as Telstra's call centre, Simplot Australia's (more recognisable as brands such as Edgells, BirdsEye, Chiko Roll, and I&J Seafood products) food processing and canning plant and Burkes Transport a local trucking and distribution company.[4] In 1982, Clyde Engineering opened a railway component facility in Kelso, initially producing electrical equipment under licence from Hitachi.[82][83] In 1982 it began manufacturing locomotives.[84] It closed in 2013.[85]

Government sector employers with large local workforces include Country Energy with their District Field Office and Corporate Office, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst Regional Council, the NSW Land Registry Services that provide mapping and survey data across NSW, the Greater Western Area Health Service – Regional Office, Bathurst Correctional Centre, Department of Education and Training – Regional Office, Police Service – Chifley Local Area Command, and NSW State Forests – Regional Office.[4] In April 1982, the State Rail Authority opened a locomotive and wagon overhaul facility in Bathurst.[86][87]

The Bathurst region's climate of cool winter weather lends itself to stone fruit production and cool variety grapes suitable for wine production.

Bathurst is the location for the Bathurst Primary Industries Centre, a government facility that has been operating since 1895 and originally known as The Experimental Farm. Originally established to study most facets of agriculture in the early growth years of the western inland, work included dairy, pigs, vegetable, cereal plantings, and fruit trees. The site is still one of the most important stone fruit research units in Australia.[88]

Sheep and wool production are the main primary sector industries in the surrounding area with beef cattle a secondary production. Wool has been a significant part of the Bathurst rural scene since the 1850s when the industry was growing rapidly. Lambs for meat production are a common product of the region's farms. Beef cattle breeds are predominantly British, British cross and European cross; the Bos indicus types are present but not common.[89]

Bathurst is the site of a major timber processing facility, which uses timber harvested from the surrounding forests. There are large plantations of softwood timber (pinus radiata) that are harvested for timber products; the main product being sawlogs, and some pulp. Bathurst is the headquarters for the Macquarie Region of Forestry Corporation of NSW (a NSW State Owned Corporation).[90]

Bathurst is a regional highway hub. Several roads including the Great Western Highway, Mid-Western Highway, Mitchell Highway, O'Connell Road to Oberon and Bathurst-Ilford Road all start in Bathurst. Other major roads in Bathurst include Durham Street, Eleven Mile Drive, and Bradwardine Road.

Bathurst railway station

Bathurst railway station is located ten minutes' walk from the city centre. It is serviced by daily NSW TrainLink trains and buses east to Lithgow then on to Sydney, north west to Dubbo, west to Parkes and south to Cootamundra.[123] [124]

Local bus services provided by Bathurst Buslines operate in the surrounding suburbs of Bathurst,[125] with a bus interchange in Howick Street, opposite Armada Bathurst.

Interurban bus services are provided between Bathurst and Lithgow, Bathurst and Orange, and Bathurst and Oberon. Long-distance coaches are operate between Bathurst and Sydney by Australia Wide Coaches.

FlyPelican is the only airline providing passenger services at Bathurst Airport; the airline operates 6 return flights from Sydney Airport per week from Sunday to Friday.

The local daily newspaper is the Western Advocate, published in Bathurst for 150 years. The publication has a circulation of 5,800 copies.[138]

Bathurst-licensed stations include:

• 2BS FM 95.1 (commercial) – transmitted from the broadcaster's own tower in the northern suburb of Eglinton
• B-Rock FM 99.3 (commercial) – transmitted from the broadcaster's own tower in the Ovens Ranges near Yetholme
• 2MCE-FM 92.3 (community)
• Life FM 100.1(Christian community) – transmitted from the Bathurst broadcast site Yetholme

National and other stations

• ABC Central West 549 AM
• NewsRadio 98.3
• Radio National 104.3/96.7
• Triple J 101.9/95.9
• Classic FM 102.7/97.5
• SBS Radio 88.9 MHz -Special Broadcasting Service, (Multicultural)
• Vision Radio (UCB relay) 1629 AM
• Racing Radio 2KY 100.9

Television in the town area is transmitted from a tower on Mount Panorama 33°27′01″S 149°32′50″E

• 7 Regional, 7two, 7mate, 7Bravo, 7flix, ishopTV and Racing.com (Seven Network owned channels since Prime7 was acquired by Seven West Media).
• WIN Television: Nine, 9Gem, 9Go, 9Life, TVSN and GOLD (Nine affiliated channels)
• Southern Cross 10, 10 Bold, 10 Peach, 10 Shake, SBN and Sky News Regional (10 affiliated channels)
• ABC TV, ABC TV Plus, ABC Me and ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
• SBS TV, SBS Viceland, SBS World Movies, SBS Food, NITV and SBS WorldWatch (Special Broadcasting Service).
• Subscription Television services are provided by Foxtel.

Of the three main commercial networks:

• Seven News produces a half-hour local news bulletin for the Central West, airing each weeknight at 6pm. It is produced from local newsrooms in Orange and Dubbo and broadcast from studios in Canberra.
• WIN Television produces a half-hour local news bulletin for the Central West, airing each weeknight at 5:30pm. It is produced from its local newsroom in Orange and broadcast from studios in Wollongong.
• Southern Cross 10 produces short news updates of 10 News First throughout the day from its Hobart studios.