Bathurst, Central Tablelands, New South Wales, Australia

Notes:
Bathurst is a city in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. It is about 200 kilometres (120 mi) west-northwest of Sydney and is the seat of the Bathurst Regional Council. Bathurst is the oldest inland settlement in Australia and had a population of 36,801 at June 2018.



Local government was trialled in the new Colony with a 'Bathurst and Carcoar District Council' established on 12 August 1843, Bathurst was proclaimed a town in 1852 and incorporated as a borough in 1862, next a municipality in 1883, then gazetted a city in on 20 March 1885 the same day as Sydney was declared a city. 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.



Bathurst is often referred to as the Gold Country as it was the site of the first gold discovery and where the first gold rush occurred in Australia. Bathurst is the second oldest inland city behind Goulburn as stated by historian Oscar Cunningham. Today education, tourism and manufacturing drive the economy. The internationally known racetrack Mount Panorama is a landmark of the city. Bathurst has a historic city centre with many ornate buildings remaining from the gold rush period of the mid to late 19th century.



The median age of the city's population is 35 years; which is particularly young for a regional centre (the state median is 38), and is related to the large education sector in the community. Population growth has reached 1.6% per annum over the five years until 2010, making Bathurst the seventh fastest growing regional city in New South Wales. This growth over recent years has resulted in increased urban development including retail precincts, sporting facilities, housing estates and expanding industrial areas.



Geography

Bathurst is located on the western edge of the Great Dividing Range in the Macquarie River plain; also known as the Bathurst plains. The city is located adjacent to the Macquarie River which is part of the Murray-Darling basin, the largest river system in Australia. The city is protected by a levee bank to protect the city from occasional flood events. Mount Panorama is located 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) from the CBD and effectively within the city limits; it is 877 metres (2,877 ft) AMSL and rises 215 metres (705 ft) above the Bathurst CBD.



The Great Western Highway which begins in the centre of the city of Sydney, ends at Bathurst. Two main state highways start at Bathurst: the Mitchell Highway to Bourke and the Mid-Western Highway to Hay. Bathurst is about mid-way along a regional road route from Canberra and Goulburn to Mudgee and the Hunter Region. Bathurst is also on the Main Western railway line that starts at Sydney Central and proceeds for 242 kilometres (150 mi) by rail to Bathurst.



The Macquarie River divides Bathurst with the CBD located on the western side of the river. Four road bridges and two rail bridges span the river within the city area. From the upstream side they are: Macquarie River Railway Bridge (built in 1876[9]) closed in 2011 (replaced with a new concrete single track rail bridge structure alongside and brought into use in 2011); the four lane Evans Bridge which opened in 1995; the Denison Bridge opened in 1870 (closed to road traffic and now a pedestrian bridge); the Gordon Edgell Bridge, a low-level bridge located on George Street; and Rankens Bridge at Eglinton.



Landform

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.



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.



History

The Bathurst region was originally occupied by the Wiradjuri Aboriginal people.



The government surveyor, George Evans, was the first European to sight the Bathurst Plains in 1813, following the first successful European 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, the existing road terminus west of Sydney, to the Bathurst Plains. The first road to cross the Blue Mountains 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. Governor Macquarie surveyed the finished road in April 1815 by driving his carriage across it from Sydney to Bathurst. The Governor commended Cox and stated that the project would have taken three years if it had been done under a contract. As a reward Cox was awarded 810 hectares (2,000 acres) of land near what is now Bathurst.



On 7 May 1815, Governor Macquarie at the terminus of Cox's Road raised the flag, ordered a ceremonial volley to be fired and proclaimed and named the future town of Bathurst after the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl Bathurst. Bathurst is the oldest inland town in Australia. It was intended to be the administrative centre of the western plains of New South Wales, where orderly colonial settlement was planned.





Bathurst, painted by Joseph Backler c.1847?1857

Local Wiradjuri groups under leaders such as Windradyne resisted the settlers until the Frontier Wars of the early 1820s ended the open conflict. The initial settlement of Bathurst was on the eastern side of the river in 1816. It is in today's suburb of Kelso. Ten men were granted 20 hectares (50 acres); five were men born in the colony and five were immigrants. These men were William Lee, Richard Mills, Thomas Kite, Thomas Swanbrooke, George Cheshire, John Abbott, John and James Blackman, John Neville and John Godden. 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.



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.



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



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 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. 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.



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.

Latitude: -33.4193, Longitude: 149.5775

---

Quick Links

• What's New
• Search
• Surnames

• Calendar
• All Media
• Sources

Contact Us

Contact Us
Our Surnames
Our Stories

Webmaster Message

We make every effort to document our research. If you have something you would like to add, please contact us.