After our rip around Mt Panorama we check in to our budget, self-catering accommodation at the Bathurst Apartments in Morriset Street. The people are friendly and totally obliging. Great country hospitality. The rooms a little battered but clean and spacious. The whole complex is made up of half a dozen two storey buildings each containing 10 or 12 units and is set in an acre or so of well maintained grounds. The apartments were originally built as a retirement home for single men, but is now being totally refurbished for tourist and conference accommodation. Next time we stay here the interiors will be much more modern but also more expensive we guess. We are close enough to walk to the centre of Bathurst to get our bearings and buy some lunch.
Old Bathurst town is remarkable. A total, glorious surprise from the architecture...
To the monuments...
To the wide, straight streets lined with the ornate Victorian/Art Deco lamps...
To the large, manicured, green-space right at the heart of Bathurst called Machattie Park...
In the cool ferny are three genuine marble statues. Psyche (goddess of the soul, wife of Eros god of love, La Prigioniera d'Amore (the prisoner of love), and Dispacato d'Amore (the messenger of love). We never dreamed we would discover such sensational sculptures in a Bathurst park...
As an aside a plaque in front of the marble statues commemorates the visit of Charles Darwin to the Bathurst region in 1836. Throughout the Machattie park there are elaborate monuments to explorers, politicians and notable locals...
The Bathurst Court House is very grand...
The war memorial Carillon stands in the centre of Kings Parade across the road across the street from the Court House...
Memorial to George Evans (1780 -1852) who lead a party that explored and surveyed the Bathurst Plains in 1813. Evans when on to explore much more of NSW int the following decades...
Time for lunch. We were planning a eating out but when we came across Village Meats with their grand display of dry aging beef our taste buds decided a nice home cooked steak would be all the go. Village meats is a gourmet butcher with budget prices; even better. The beef they are using for the dry aging is from a breed called Speckle Park. The glass display cabinet is kept at 3 degrees C and has a thick layer of rock salt on the floor of the case to dry the atmosphere...
After lunch we took a drive around town. Passed the Base Hospital...
Just out of town to have a look at the grand old "Abercrombie House". Maybe will come back tomorrow for the guide tour of the inside. According to the local tourist brochures it is well worth a visit....
Bathurst is the site of one of the first Australian cannery established by Gordon Edgell in 1926 to process Asparagus. He went onto build the the iconic Australia brand. Edgell now owned by the multi-national Simplot, still cans sweet corn at Bathurst factory...
Bathurst is also sheep and lamb country. Here grazing on irrigated pastures...
Bathurst has a few lofty private schools in keeping with it's history of agricultural and mining prosperity...
Bathurst also boast a maximum security goal. The ornately and adroitly carved sandstone gates are probably not as interesting or as fascinating to the those who spend a lot of time here as there are to us...
Across the road the Bathurst Cementary...
Another private school this one is St. Stanislaus College...
Then it is on to see the home (the only adult home) of the great working class politician John Curtin, Prime Minister of Australia from 1945 to 1949. Australia would not have another Labor Primer Minister until Gough Whitlam in 1972. Curtin died in 1951 and is buried in the Bathurst Cementary...
The old steets of Bathurst with their rows of semi detached townhouses are reministnet of inner Sydney. Here a townhouse will set you back a few hundred thousand not a few million as in Paddington or Woollahra...
Old light standards marching single file up the centre of the wide streets is very impressive...
The histroic Bathurst railway station...
Sits on the border between the well kept town and near post-industrial wasteland on the other side of the tracks...
Before he was elected to Fedral parliment Ben Chifley was a stean locomotive driver. He will prehaps be the last working class Prime Minister of Australia. This is the steam engine Chiefly drove during the nearly 30 years he worked for the NSW Railways...
The countryside around Bathurst is prime agricultural and grazing land...
The prosperity generated by the land has bequeathed some amazing public and private buildings to the city of Bathurst. "Woolstone" is just one of the magnicant old homes...
Old Government House was built in 1817 and is amongst the oldest buildings in Australia constructed of brick...
At the tourist infromation centre we are told Abercrombie house has a guide tour on Sundays at 11.00 and that we really should not miss it. The morning is crisp and clear. Abercrombie house stands magestically in the morning light. Up close we begin to see the detail of the architecture...
Jenelle is infatuated with the giant Scotch Thistle growing in the extensive gardens...
Abercrombie house is replica Scotish Baronial home. Abercrombie House was built by James Stewart (c. 1870s). The 40 room historic mansion was originally the home of the Stewart family - Bathurst pioneers.
It is now the home of the Morgan family who bought it in 1969 and have spent almost thirty years on a program of restoration and redecoration.
It is one of the largest private homes in the Central West covering 210 squares, with 29 fireplaces, 7 staircases, more than 40 rooms and a ballroom with a ceiling 28 feet high.
The son of the owner of the home leads the guide tour. He is so passionate about the house; it's history, it's restoration and it's protection. The interior is largely orginal except for the door knobs and a few marble fireplaces which were stolen during the years that the home laid abandoned in the 60s and 70s...
They have a collection of these Austin cars as well. Very regal...
After our jaw dropping visit to Abercrombie House and another piece of that wonderful steak we stike off for a drive around the small former gold mining villages north of Bathurst...
In Hill End where many of the orginal house have been removed or destoryed the historical society has put up photos to show what the orginal propety look liked in the town's hey day...
Hill End was main famous after the war by the artists Russell Drysdale and Donald Friend who came here to get away from the Sydney "Push" and to find some new inspiration. An artist colony grew up around them...
Hill End could be a great place to hang out for a month or two and do some painting. The landscape has lost none of its magical qualites that attracted the Sydney painters in the 40s and 50s.
We make a wrong turn on the way home and end up going via Mudgee and Lithgow. In the process we go within a whisker of running out of petrol. We forgot that out here in the country there is not a servo on every corner and of those servos that do exist, not a lot are open early Sunday evening.
