The Bathurst area was originally occupied by the Wiradjuri Aboriginal people.
Colonial period (1800s) to gold rush era (1860s)
The government surveyor, George Evans, was the first European to sight the Bathurst Plains in 1813. In 1814, Governor Lachlan Macquarie approved an offer by William Cox to build a road crossing the Blue Mountains, from Emu Plains, the existing road terminus west of Sydney, to the Bathurst Plains. The first road to cross the Blue Mountains was 12 feet (3.7 m) wide by 101?2 miles (163 km) long, built between 18 July 1814 to 14 January 1815 using 5 freemen, 30 convict labourers and 8 soldiers as guards. Governor Macquarie surveyed the finished road in April 1815 by driving his carriage across it from Sydney to Bathurst. The Governor commended Cox and stated that the project would have taken three years if it had been done under a contract. As a reward Cox was awarded 2,000 acres (810 ha) of land near what is now Bathurst.
Bathurst was founded at the terminus of Cox's Road on the orders of Governor Macquarie who selected the site on 7 May 1815. It is the oldest inland town in Australia. The name Bathurst comes from the surname of the British Colonial Secretary Lord Bathurst. It was intended to be the administrative centre of the western plains of New South Wales, where orderly colonial settlement was planned.
Local Wiradjuri groups under leaders such as Windradyne resisted the settlers until the Frontier Wars of the early 1820s ended the open conflict.
The initial settlement of Bathurst was on the eastern side of the river in 1816. It is in today's suburb of Kelso. Ten men were granted 50 acres (20 ha); five were men newborn in the colony and five were immigrants. These men were William Lee, Richard Mills, Thomas Kite, Thomas Swanbrooke, George Cheshire, John Abbott, John and James Blackman, John Neville and John Godden. In 1818 Governor Macquarie stated in his diary:
This morning I inspected 10
