01-23-2025: Bathurst

Margaret is a professional driver, drives a school bus, and has to have periodic medical checkups. Today, she had an ophthalmology appointment in Bathurst for a vision exam for her license. Bathurst is about a 90-minute drive from Rylstone and is a city of nearly 50,000. One of the things we thought we would do is visit the Bathurst Rail Museum after her eye exam.

Bathurst was one of the original developments after the Great Divide was traversed in 1813, so it is one of the oldest cities in New South Wales, having been founded in 1815. It has a big heritage section with walks around the city. The area around Bathurst was populated during the Australian gold rush which started in 1851. During our last visit, we had visited Sofala, a very old gold mining town, and Hill End, where we went to a museum all about the gold rush days. Daniel also took us panning for gold. We stopped in Sofala on the way home, so I’ll talk more about that later in this post.

While Margaret was at her appointment, the rest of us went to Machattie Park, a very lovely spot. Machattie Park, built in 1890, is an historically significant example of a late 19th century Victorian country town park. It exhibits the principal elements typical of the Victorian period in terms of the form and layout and is particularly valuable because of the quality of the decorative features. It has a great many old trees lining the walkways. There is also a conservatory housing various tropical plants and a begonia house, which unfortunately was closed.

I took this photo because I thought this tree trunk looked like an elephant’s leg.

Clare noticed something that really got our attention. A few things were flying into the tops of some trees. On closer inspection, she discovered a whole bunch of grey-headed flying foxes hanging upside down from the branches. Flying foxes are very large bats! They are very important pollinators in the region and are generally nocturnal, so for Clare to have noticed a couple of them flying was lucky. If you look very closely in these photos, you’ll notice black blobs on the branches. These are the flying foxes.

One of the gardeners walked by and I thanked him for his work in keeping the park so beautiful. He stopped and talked with us for a while. He was quite familiar with New York in that as a horticulturalist, we had studied material from Cornell. He was quite knowledgeable and was also well versed on the current weather conditions in New York, so we talked cold and snow.

For lunch we went to a small restaurant called Rockabilly Cafe. It was all decked out in Elvis memorabilia. It had red booths and chrome-based tables. It’s so surprising to me how much American culture is saturated into things here.

Here’s some photos of Bathurst.

We found out that the Rail Museum is closed on Thursdays, so we drove around some of the residential areas. Clare went to a place where she could buy leather which she needs for a costume she is making. She was thrilled to be able to buy large hide skins and also lots of small leftover pieces.

Margaret drove out to a Scottish baronial manor house called Abercrombie House. Unfortunately, it was already closed, so we couldn’t go in. There were several historical signs, though, that we could read about the history of this magnificent home. This place is currently a family residence of the Morgans. I can’t imagine how much money they have spent renovating and restoring the building. It was quite rundown when they purchased it in 1969. I see from their website that you can get high tea there on Sundays which I imagine is an experience.

We headed back to Rylstone. We did make a stop at Sofala to use the facilities. One of the thing that really impresses me is that all towns seem to have public toilets. There are not many superhighways in Australia so most traveling is done on secondary roads passing through towns and villages. We never lacked for a toilet in all our travels, even in the middle of nowhere.

Sofala is considered Australia’s oldest surviving gold mining town. It’s a tiny little town, population of less than 200, and when we drove down one of the few streets, all the locals were sitting outside the pub enjoying a drink. They gave us a look as we drove by. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in a little historic town with tourists stopping all the time.

We drove up to the Western Goldfields Museum, which we thought was closed since it was 6:00pm. Margaret went up to the house where the museum is housed and found the curator lying down on the lounge in his home. Margaret asked if the museum was open and the fellow jumped up and said he’s always open. The curator’s name is R.A. Wigglesworth, and what a character he is. He has amassed a private collection of the most interesting stuff. Of course, there was some gold to be seen, which was locked up in a two huge safes.

I was so fascinated by the exhibits of old medical equipment. I asked Mr. Wigglesworth why he had collected these medical instruments and he said as an engineer and is interested in how tools were made and what they were used for.

He also had the most amazing collection of locks and handcuffs. I asked why he was collecting these, he said he was a locksmith by trade and so anything to do with locks fascinated him.

He had all sorts of stuff in this relatively small room and it was fun perusing his collections. He rattled off all kinds of information about his collections with absolute zeal.

We were struck by the fact that Mr. Wigglesworth had received a reply from King Charles and Queen Camilla after he wrote a one sentence congratulations note on their coronation, which was proudly exhibited.

Mr. Wigglesworth walked us around his property where he had constructed some pools. He has already created a plaque that is on a large boulder where he wishes to be buried. In reading the plaque, you can see that he is quite the character.

So our visit to the Western Goldfields Museum was a lot of fun. We were all glad to have visited and to have met Mr. Wigglesworth.

It was a nice day touring Bathurst and Sofala. And the drive was lovely and scenic.