SFT Tour - Day 4 - Prime Ministers, Prime Event, Prime Real Estate

Photo bombing in
bicentennial park

The day didn't start well. Our request for Google to find the Tourist Information Centre sent us seven kilometres to the south of Bathurst. If not in the middle of nowhere, we were at least close.

It is usual practice for Sue to read ahead on the next place we'll visit, form opinions of what's worth seeing and then early in the visit, drop in on the visitors information centre to confirm our selections. This morning, we were keen to ride the Hop On, Hop Off Bus and get an overview of Bathurst.

"Sorry its not running at the moment."

Oh well, we could go to a number of interesting museums.

"Sorry. That one is shut because of Covid. This one is only open on weekends. Another is being refurbished ..."

Do you get the picture?

Instead, we grabbed the self-guided, town tour and headed off with Sue navigating and me disgruntled. What could go wrong? Well, in the end, not much and we had a fun day.

Without giving you a blow by blow to all the sights or the couple of occasions we got lost - once Sue's fault, once mine - here are the highlights and boy, what highlights they were.

Ben & Elizabeth Chifley's Cottage

It wasn't open for tours but is was there and signage gave us a enough information to make the visit to the very humble home of Australia's Prime Minister of the 1940's interesting. No.10 Busby St shares a common wall with No.12 and was bought by George McKenzie. He lived in No.12 and rented No.10. He raised his daughters Anne and Elizabeth there and when Elizabeth marriage the engine driver and staunch railway man, Ben Chifley, they began their marriage as tennants in No.10. George relented and gifted No.10 to the young couple and Ben bought his share of the house for 10 shillings from Elizabeth so they would be on an equal footing. Increasingly away, once he became a member of parliament, Elizabeth would sit at home while Ben went to and from Canberra on the train. Whilst his transport graduated to a driver and a Cadillac when he was Prime Minister, it was still the same humble dwelling he returned to in Busby St when he could. 

Mount Panorama

Whilst my childhood love for what used to be called the Hardie Ferodo 500 didn't last until it became the Bathurst 1000, Australia's iconic racing car circuit remains strong among those things I love about my father. Every year, we would sit and watch the race, often with by brother in law Lindsay, each with our favourite drivers or in either the Ford or Holden camp. I know grown adults who still do so today and with all, much of the meaning comes from the family memories it evokes. I could feel the excitement rising in me as we drove toward the track and by the time we turned in Pit Strait at Murray's Corner, I was positively bubbling. Of course, on all other days of the year, its a two carriage roadway but I couldn't believe there were heathen turning left to drive it in a clockwise direction. Off we roared, at 60kms an hour, past the pits and then around the sharp left to head up Mountain Strait - only to be confronted by roadwork signs! Soon it was up and over and through the tight bends and sudden drops across the top of the mountain, after I had switched the car to manual and had finger tip control on the paddles and it was all I could do to not drop into racing lines and cut the apexes. For a moment I caught up with the Allan Moffat part of me, edging past Brock (bletch) and then rounding that final left hander, a Conrod Strait opened up in front of me. I'll admit, before I knew it I may have been exceeding 60kms/hour but reality set in quickly and I went back to cruise control.

What an experience! How fulfilling ... so I did another lap and it was only five minutes slower than the offical lap record.

Abercrombie House

Built in the 1870's by the Scot, James Stewart, the son of William Stewart, who was Lieutenant Governor General of New South Wales when he came to Australia in 1825, it is grandeur on the largest scale. Internal walls are render over brick and exterior walls, locally quarried Basalt and sandstone. The result is walls that are two and half feet thick! Two storeys, and rooms cropping up in all sorts of places from stairways which seems to rise from somewhere and go somewhere else. James son Athol became the landlord after the death of his father but in 1927, when Athol's wife died, he closed the place up and left. It was left to fall into decline. In 1968, Rex Morgan bought the place from James great grandson and he and his family embarked on a restoration project which has bought the house back to a close approximation of what it was. Importantly, Morgan, his son, Christopher and grandchildren have lived continuously in Abercrombie House since and they open it to the public as a living home. History has been lovingly recreated in every room and also in the out buildings but not at the expense of practicality. Heritage listed, it really is one of the best of these grand homes of so long ago we have seen.

Click for today's photos

As I said earlier, there were other interesting places too but the only others I'll mention in passing are the bicentenary flagpole, which is mounted on a glass pyramid and nearby glass-etched panels with aboriginal motiffs and including the people who helped in the creation of them. The other is Government House, so named because it was thought to be the relic of the original seat of government in Bathurst. Later research turned up that the actual Government House was a little way down the street and this building was either the home and business quarters of the local tanner or a girls school. It was being used as a dog kennels when the local council bought it for preservation but for apparently the wrong reason!

A fine day.