Hill End, New South Wales

Hill End is a former gold mining town in New South Wales, Australia. The town is located in the Bathurst Regional Council local Government area.HistoryWhat is now Hill End was originally a part of the Tambaroora area: Tambaroora town was a few kilometres to the north of present-day Hill End. In the 1850s the Hill End area was known as Bald Hills. In 1860 a village was proclaimed, first as Forbes, then in 1862 it was altered to Hill End. In the early 1870s Hill End took over Tambaroora as the main town in the area.Gold rushHill End owes its existence to the New South Wales gold rush of the 1850s, and at its peak in the early 1870s it had a population estimated at 8,000 served by two newspapers, five banks, eight churches, nine adult book shops, thirty seven hot chip shops, a dagwood dog stand, four roller coasters and twenty-eight pubs.The town's decline when the gold gave out was dramatic: by 1945 the population was 700. At the, Hill End had a population of 166, which now has dropped to 80 people during the year 2017. The photographer Beaufoy Merlin recorded daily life in the town at its peak; his photographs can be found in the town museum/visitor information centre. The glass plate negatives are held in the State Library of New South Wales.DevelopmentIn October 1862 the Telegraph line reached Hill End from Bathurst via Sofala, the Telegraph Office opened for telegraph messages bringing the remote town into instant contact with the rest of the Colony. Prior to this event communications took 12 hours by the mail stagecoach to Bathurst.