page_title: Bathurst, New South Wales
section_title: Colonial period (1800s) to gold rush era (1860s)
hierarchical_section_title: Bathurst, New South Wales / History / Colonial period (1800s) to gold rush era (1860s)
caption_attribution_description: English: Landscape painting of Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia
context_page_description: Bathurst is a city in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. It is about 200 kilometres 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.
  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. 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, 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.
context_section_description: 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. 
  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.
  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.
  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.
  
caption: Bathurst, painted by Joseph Backler c.1847–1857
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