Bathurst, New South Wales

Bathurst is a regional centre in the state of New South Wales, Australia approximately 200km west of Sydney and is the seat of the Bathurst Regional Council Local Government Area. It has a population of 37,001 (2005). It is the oldest inland settlement in Australia.

Bathurst is a regional services centre, the home of one of the campuses of Charles Sturt University, and a tourism centre. It is a cathedral city, being the seat for the Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops of Bathurst.

Bathurst is best known for the Mount Panorama motor racing circuit, venue for the Bathurst 12 Hour motor race each February and the Bathurst 1000 motor race each October. It is also the home of wartime Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley, who represented the area in the Federal Parliament and is buried in Bathurst.

Bathurst is unique in that it has a collection of house museums representing different periods of its history from first settlement to the 1970s. The house museums include Old Government Cottage, Abercrombie House, Miss Traill's House and Chifley Home.

Central Bathurst is host to the Australian Fossil & Mineral Museum, which houses the Somerville Collection of fossils and minerals, and features Australia's only complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton.

Public transport
Bathurst Station is located ten minutes away from the city centre. It is serviced by CountryLink trains and buses to Sydney or Lithgow and Dubbo. Local bus services operate in the surrounding suburbs of Bathurst, with a bus interchange in Howick Street, opposite Stockland Bathurst.

Roads
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.

High schools
Bathurst has four private and two public high schools.
 * All Saints College - private, co-ed
 * Denison College - This includes two campuses: Kelso Campus and Bathurst Campus - public
 * MacKillop College - private, all girls
 * St. Stanislaus College - private, all boys
 * The Scots School - private, co-ed

History
The Bathurst area was originally occupied by the Wiradjuri Aboriginal peoples. The government surveyor George William Evans was the first European to sight the Bathurst Plains in 1813.

Bathurst was founded in 1815 on the orders of Governor Lachlan Macquarie, and is the oldest inland town in Australia. The name Bathurst comes from the surname of the British Colonial Secretary Lord Bathurst. It was intended to be the administrative centre of the western plains of New South Wales where orderly colonial settlement was planned.

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. Each of 10 men were granted 50 acres (200,000 m²), five were men new born in the colony and five were immigrants. These men were William Lee, Richard Mills, Thomas Kite, Thomas Swanbrooke, George Cheshire, John Abbott, John Blackman, James Blackman, John Neville and John Godden. In 1818 Governor Lachlan Macquarie stated in his diary: ''This morning I inspected 10 new settlers for Bathurst. I have agreed to grant each 50 acres (200,000 m²) of land, a servant, a cow, four bushels (141 litres) of wheat, an allotment in the new town, and to provide for them for 12 months from the King's stores.''

Flecks of gold were first discovered in the Fish River in February 1823, but it was not until the discovery of gold at Ophir and later Sofala in the 1850's and 1860's that the town of Bathurst began to boom. Bathurst's economy was transformed by the discovery of gold in 1851. It later became the centre of an important coal-mining and manufacturing region. The Main Western railway line from Sydney reached Bathurst in 1876.

In December 2001 the inaugural meeting of the biennial Australasian Ornithological Conference series, initiated and organised by the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union, was held in Bathurst.

Significant people from or associated with Bathurst

 * Windradyne (c.1788-1835), Wiradjuri Warrior
 * Lord Bathurst (1762-1834), British politician
 * Robert Gordon Edgell (1866-1948), founder of Edgells food processing
 * Ben Chifley (1885-1951), Australian Prime Minister
 * Kim Mackay (1902-1960), British Labour politician
 * Arthur George "Bluey" Wilkinson (1911-1940), Australian speedway rider, Individual World Champion in 1938
 * Brian Booth (1933- ), test cricketer and Olympic hockey player
 * Peter Brock (1945-2006), motor racing legend
 * Peter O'Malley (1965- ), Australian professional golfer
 * Matt Naylor (1983- ), Australian field hockey player
 * Rodney Rude (? - ), stand-up comedian
 * Andrew Denton (1960-), student of Mitchell College
 * Amanda Keller (1962-), student of Mitchell College
 * Archie Thompson (1978- ), footballer; holds the all-time scoring record for the Australia A-League, and is the world record holder for goals in an international match (13).
 * Sam Lloyd-Green (1987-) sportsman; former schoolboy sensation, represented high levels in both the respective sports of Rugby Union and Cricket in Europe and in Sydney, Australia.
 * Beau Robinson (1986-) footballer; Australian schoolboys Rugby Union Rep, former Canterbury Bulldogs player and Waratahs Super 14 player (2006-)

Bathurst-licensed stations

 * 2BS 1503 AM (commercial)
 * B-Rock FM 99.3 (commercial)
 * 2MCE 92.3 (community)

Orange-licensed stations

 * Star FM 105.9
 * 2GZ FM 105.1
 * 2EL 1089 AM
 * ABC Central West 549 AM

National and other stations

 * Life FM 100.1 (Christian)
 * Racing Radio 100.9
 * Triple J 101.9/95.9
 * Radio National 104.3/96.7
 * Classic FM 102.7/97.5
 * NewsRadio 98.3 (proposed)