Hill End Post Office

 

Hill End
Fascinating and significant goldmining town
Hill End is a well-preserved goldmining ghost town which is now an important historic site and a major tourist attraction, drawing about 35 000 visitors annually. Surrounded by some rugged mountain and gorge country, it is 870 m above sea-level and 275 km north-west of Sydney (via Turondale). The roads were carved out in the 19th century and are still largely unsealed. Access is either via Mudgee (66 km) or Bathurst. There are three approaches from Bathurst - via Sofala (78 km), Turondale (69 km) or along the old bridle track (57 km). The latter is a scenic route which follows the Macquarie and Turon Rivers. It is unsuitable for caravans and coaches and should not be attempted when wet.

Alluvial gold was discovered at Hill End (then known as Bald Hill) in 1851 and there were were 150 miners on the site within a month. The first stamper battery in Australia was set up around 1856 by the 'Old Company' which employed Cornish equipment and miners, although initial returns were unremarkable. The stamper battery was located near the township of Tambaroora (5 km to the north of present-day Hill End), reinforcing Tambaroora's position as the major settlement. By the early 1860s it had a population of some 2000 people.

By comparison Bald Hill had only a few hundred residents, a hotel and two stores when it was surveyed and gazetted, mistakenly, as 'Forbes' in 1860. It was renamed 'Hillend' in 1862.

 

Thomas Jones Sydney Hotel

 

At the time the Old Company had rights to all reef gold in the area but when it departed in the early 1860s opportunities were opened up. Steady work began on sites such as Hawkins Hill and in 1870 worthy returns began to occur. As word spread of the escalating profits in 1871 speculators moved in en masse. They turned syndicates of self-employed reef miners into floated companies with the miners reduced to employee status. They also bought up barren land around town and sold worthless shares to unknowing Sydneysiders.

In October 1872 the Star of Hope Gold Mining Co. uncovered what was, at the time, the world's largest specimen of reef gold. 'Holtermann's Nugget', as it was known, weighed 286 kg and measured 150 cm by 66 cm with an average thickness of 10 cm. That week alone, over 700 kilograms of gold were carted away from Hill End by the gold escort. In all the amount of gold extracted at Hill End was greater than any goldfield in NSW other than Canbelego.

By the end of 1872 Hill End had overtaken Tambaroora as the major settlement. There were over 8000 people, making it one of NSW's largest inland towns with more than a kilometre of shops, five banks, two newspapers, a brewery, 27 pubs, over 200 companies in the field, and stamper batteries pounding ore 24 hours a day. New businesses proliferated while land prices and rents ballooned.

 

Robert Northey, General Grocer & Produce Store

 

Overcrowding was a major problem as the town boundaries had been set in 1860 when the population was small and all around it were mines which prevented geographic expansion. Infrastructure was virtually nonexistent and deathly diseases were rampant. However, the influx of money led to rapid improvements. By March 1873 there were four churches, a hospital, improved roads, decent business premises, a public school, three banks and two newspapers. Substantial brick, weatherboard and corrugated iron buildings replaced the makeshift wattle-and-daub huts.

For all that, Hill End proved to be truly a boom (and bust) town. Part of the problem was that the fingers of too many investors had been burned on the stock market. Shareholders, desperate to sign on in 1872, were desperate to back out in 1873. This reduction of financial input was exacerbated by company promoters who had left town with all spare cash leaving no capital for prospecting and development at a time when there was a need to dig deeper, as gold on the upper levels was becoming exhausted.

By 1874 cash was scarce on the fields. Miners received a share in prospective profits rather than wages. Hence businesses suffered. Stores closed and the population went into decline, from 8000 in 1872 to 5000 in 1875, 4000 in 1876, 1200 by 1882 and 500 at the turn of the century.

Some miners hung on, literally scraping a living by sifting through the surface. A few larger mines had some short-term success via amalgamation and deeper shafts but none lasted long due to flooding and lack of funds. Sheep, cattle and agriculture helped keep the town afloat through the hard times.

Hill End experienced something of a revival from 1908, when the Reward Company began operations, to the early 1920s when the operations ceased. Individual miners stayed on to pick over the mullock heaps and they were joined by numerous unemployed men in the Great Depression. Rabbiting and roadworks provided further employment.

In 1945 the population was about 700 but it soon declined quite dramatically. Renewed mining by Cornish immigrants in the early fifties was short-lived and hydraulic sluicing operations in the 1960s failed.

The future of the town looked parlous but the solution to its decline was found when Hill End was proclaimed an historic site in 1967 and placed under the care of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which began preserving and restoring the buildings on the site. Today about 100 people manage to make a living from what is now essentially a tourist attraction.

Prior to that time the painters Russell Drysdale and Donald Friend had recognised the uniqueness of Hill End's character which helped to inform their distinguished and influential landscape painting. Other painters followed in their wake and the Hill End Artists in Residence Program ensures the continuity of the tradition. For more details check out www.hillendart.com.

Hill End has two camping grounds (fees apply). The Village Camping Area has powered van sites. The Glendora Camping Area, 1 km north-west of the town centre, has a modern amenities block. Accommodation is also available at the Hill End Holiday Ranch and the Royal Hotel. South of town there are some fine picnic spots on the Turon River.

Things to see:  

Information Centre
The National Parks and Wildlife Service have a visitors' information centre which doubles as a museum and souvenir shop. It is located in the Old Hospital Building on the Bathurst Rd and is open on a daily basis from 9.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. but is closed from 12.30 p.m. to 1.30 p.m. Information can be obtained here on the tours operating in the area, tel: (02) 6337 8206.

The centre contains material relating to the mining era and a 15-minute audio-visual display. One room has been set up as hospital ward c.1870 with contemporary medical equipment. Some of the many photographs taken of Hill End in 1872 by Beaufoy Merlin are also on display. They were commissioned by Bernard Holtermann who made his fortune at Hill End. He displayed the extensive collection internationally with a view to attracting other immigrants to the country which had favoured him. Some of the photographs have been set up around the streets to furnish some insight into how the town looked in its heyday.

 

 

Cows outside Dodds Family Hotel

 

Historic Buildings
Many of Hill End's buildings have been demolished over the years and on-site photographs (taken by Merlin) denote what stood on the empty lots. On the other hand, almost all of the buildings which remain date from the early 1870s and many have been carefully restored. A self-guided walking tour pamphlet is available from the information centre.

Surviving buildings include the cottage which belonged to Louis Beyers (late 1860s), the Great Western Store (c.1872), which now sells second-hand arts, crafts and collectables, the hospital (1872), Hosie's Store (1872), Northey's Store (1873), the school (1872), the Methodist (now Anglican) church (1870), the rough dressed sandstone of St Paul's Uniting Church (1872), 'Craigmoor' (1875) and the Royal Hotel (1872) which retains some original fittings and furniture. The police station and post office date from the turn of the century.

Beyers Ave forms a corridor leading into town. The European trees were planted at the behest of one of the town's most successful mining figures, Louis Beyers, in 1877 and the mid-1880s, with extensions made in 1928.

 

 

Malcolm Drinkwater outside the History Hill Museum

 

Hill End Museum
The Hill End Museum is a private museum located at 3548 Bathurst Rd. It has a range of items including working models, working and static stamper batteries, steam engines, winches, pumps, interactive displays, a video and a walk-in underground gold mine by request (with an optional climb out). Opening hours are 10.00 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. daily with longer hours at holiday times, tel: (02) 6337 8222.

 

Bald Hill Walk
The Bald Hill Walk is a 2-km track with interpretive signposting which starts at the post office (cnr Church and Tambaroora Sts) and leads to Bald Hill Mine. The more enthusiastic may wish to expand the walk by taking in Kittys Falls or Bald Hill.

 

 

The Son of Hope mine at History Hill Museum

 

Bald Hill Mine
Located to the west of the town, this subterranean mine has been restored to accurately reflect mining conditions in the 1870s, including contemporary tools and drilling methods and quartz veins. There are regularly conducted tours which depart from the Great Western Store.

 

Cemetery
Just north of town, on the Mudgee Rd, is the restored Hill End and Tambaroora cemetery with numerous headstones dating back to the 1870s.

 

Fossicking
Although no metal detectors or gold panning are allowed within the historic site, there is a fossicking area just past the cemetery, off the Mudgee Rd. Fossicking equipment can be hired in town or you can join a fossicking tour.

 

Tambaroora
3 km north of Hill End, Tambaroora is a ghost town which was once a busy gold town rivalling Hill End. Now there is little more than a few decrepit shacks, the foundations of the first stamper battery in the country, imported from Cornwall by the Old Company in 1856, along with the roasting pits used to break the gold-bearing quartz up into manageable pieces for the battery.

 

Lookouts
There are two lookouts which can be reached by car. The Bald Hill Lookout is north-west of town, past the Glendora Camping Ground, and Beaufoy Merlin's Lookout is south-west of town, past the Bald Hill Mine. Both are well worth visiting.

 

 

 

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Hill End