St Bathans
Destination
St Bathans is one of the more visited towns in the region by tourists. It is an extremely picturesque town with many of its historic building still beautifully preserved. The restored mud-brick Vulcan Hotel, supposedly even comes with its very own ghost in Room 1. At its height in the late 1860's there were around 2000 gold-miners living in the area supporting a dozen hotels.
Of the two churches, the corrugated iron clad St Albans Church is perhaps most interesting. Prefabricated in England, the church was gifted to St Bathans by sheep station owner Frederick Dalgety. The grandest building in St Bathans still standing is the two-storey, government-issue Post Office, built in 1902 and still open for business.
St Bathans sits adjacent to the scenic Blue Lake, a man-made lake formed from the glod-sluicings with beautiful looking clay cliffs created by the water cannons used to search for gold. In 1864 Kildare Hill loomed over St Bathans. Within relatively few years the water cannons had reduced it to a 58m deep pit that’s now the Blue Lake. The intense blue is due to minerals in the water. Today it is a great spot for camping and and swimming.
Also worth a visit is Cambrians, a few kilometres south. Cambrians was founded by Welsh miners and many of their mud-brick cottages remain as holiday homes. The nearby diggings are mostly overgrown with broom.
