Bathurst ( , ) is a city in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. Bathurst is about 200 kilometres (120 mi) west-northwest of Sydney and is the seat of the Bathurst Regional Council. Founded in 1815, Bathurst is the oldest inland settlement in Australia and had a population of 44,621 in 2023.

Bathurst is often referred to as the Gold Country, as the area was the site of Australia's first discovery of payable gold in 1851, and where Australia's first gold rush occurred. Today education, tourism and manufacturing drive the economy. The internationally known racetrack Mount Panorama, also known as Wahluu, is a landmark of the city which brings in a lot of tourism, especially during the week of the Bathurst 1000. Bathurst has a historic city centre with many ornate buildings remaining from the New South Wales gold rush in the mid to late 19th century.

History Wiradjuri 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. 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.

Early British colonisation (1815–1850)

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 wide and 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.

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.Local History, Bathurst City, Bathurst Visitor Information Centre (accessed 10 October 2013) 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 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.

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.

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. 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.

The Bathurst Rebellion occurred in late September 1830, when a large group of over 80 escaped convicts known as the Ribbon Gang roamed the Bathurst district, ransacking villages and engaging in shootouts over the course of three weeks. 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.

Gold rush era (1851–1860s)

Bathurst became the first gold centre of Australia. Flecks of gold were first discovered in the Fish River in February 1823, but it was on 12 February 1851 in a Bathurst Hotel that Edward Hargraves announced the discovery of payable gold 26 miles (42 km) north-west at the confluence of two creeks, a spot soon named Ophir. Further discoveries followed quickly nearby in Sofala and Hill End, and by the 1860s Bathurst's economy was transformed by the discovery of the region's gold and began to boom. The area's fame grew even more in 1872 when Hill End became famous for Bernhardt Holtermann's finding of the 'Beyers-Holtermann Specimen', this being the world's largest specimen of native gold ever discovered, a record that still stands today.

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.

Bathurst's position as a key transit point for transporting gold to Sydney made it an attractive target for bushrangers, causing a major problem for the authorities. Ben Hall, one of the period's most notorious bushrangers, was married in St Michael's Church at Bathurst in 1856. In October 1863, Hall and four other members of his gang raided Bathurst, robbing a jeweller's shop, bailing up the Sportsmans Arms Hotel, and engaging the police in a shootout. They returned three days later and held up more businesses. A few members of the gang spent time in Bathurst Gaol, including Fred Lowry and John Peisley, who was hanged there for murder in 1862.

Development to Federation (1860s–1910)

Coach network 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. Cobb & Co. coaches were constructed in the coaching workshops located in Bathurst and the Bathurst Information Centre contains a restored Cobb & Co. coach.

Bathurst later became the centre of an important coal-mining and manufacturing region.

Railway The Main Western railway line from Sydney reached Bathurst across the Macquarie River railway bridge 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.

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.

Early 20th century

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

Town gas had arrived in Bathurst courtesy of a private venture in 1872. Construction began on the 850 cubic metre per day (30,000 cubic feet) plant in September 1871. The streets were lighted with gas for the first time on Tuesday 14 May 1872.

The Council established a competing network from 1888. This set off fierce price competition. The private company had been charging 10s per thousand cubic feet (MCF). The Council decided on 15 March 1888 to charge 7s MCF. The private company then dropped their price to 5s which the Council matched. It was estimated that the Council would save £800 a year in street lighting costs. and that Bathurst had the cheapest gas in Australia.

[An indicative sense of the cost of this energy can be achieved by considering that a cubic foot of less energy dense coal gas is equivalent to up to ~0.5MJ of energy. 10sh in 1901 is ~$67 today. This suggests the Council was buying gas from the private company at ~$120 MJ. The cost saving on street lighting was worth ~$100,000 a year. Today gas costs ~5¢ MJ.]

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.

Electricity