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01 Bathurst GasworksBathurst2016
ISO 1001.3sf/8.024mm
Series · 22 prints
Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap
The former Bathurst Gasworks is the gasworks Bathurst's municipal council built on Russell Street in Bathurst, New South Wales, and first lit in public on 2 April 1888. Coal was carbonised for town gas until 1979, and LPG was reformed into gas there until 1987. The council borrowed £12,000 to build it after failing to come to terms with the owner of the town's private gasworks. The first plant had a retort house of 60 by 30 feet, four benches of six retorts and a gasholder of 110,000 cubic feet.
Bathurst already had gas from a private works owned by Mr Wark, and by September 1885 the council's talks to buy it had stalled. On 9 December 1885 the council resolved to raise a loan of £12,000 for corporation gas works of its own, and in July 1887 it accepted Mr G. Smith's tender of £1,500 to erect them. By the end of April 1888 the works had cost about £15,000.
The two works operated in competition until 1914, when the council bought Wark Bros' gasworks for £12,000. The retort house at the former Bathurst Gasworks was expanded and converted for machine charging from 1945, and a new carbonising plant, retort-house extensions and new purifiers followed in 1952. Construction of a West's Gas Improvement Company vertical retort house began in July 1958. Cast-iron units at the works carry the name Wests Gas Improvement Co Ltd, Sydney.
Council gas manufacture ended in 1979, when the site turned to LPG reforming, and gas production ended in 1987. In 2004 the EPA declared the site a remediation site for PAHs, benzene and cyanide; the council removed and treated tarry wastes in 2009, and the declaration was ended in 2015. On 25 November 2025 the EPA ordered a preliminary investigation of suspected contamination there. The retort houses, gasholders, boiler, tar wells and tar tank remain on the site, and since 4 February 2022 the former Bathurst Gasworks has been a local heritage item, Bathurst Regional LEP 2014 item I357.
Bathurst Free Press (3 April 1888), Bathurst Regional Council (Gasworks Rehabilitation), Daily Telegraph (30 April 1888) and State Heritage Inventory sheet 1080245
Hand-signed and numbered, printed from the original RAW file. Open editions in the two smallest sizes; limited editions of 100, 50 and 25 in the three larger, never reissued once they sell through.
Made to order by Brett in Sydney, from the original RAW file. Each print is hand-signed and numbered before it ships.
Paper
Ilford Galerie cotton rag, 310 gsm. Acrylic on metallic gloss, 260 gsm.
Lead time
Unframed: 5 to 10 business days. Framed and acrylic: 10 to 20.
Through the coal strike of late 1909 the Corporation Gas Works kept Bathurst supplied by burning wood, tar and shale, while, Alderman Webb said, other places were in darkness. Alderman James told the council he had gone to see for himself and found no coal, only blocks and sawdust, which made the place look more like a rubbish tip than a gasworks. Mr Wark gave the council a truck of coal, and the council thanked the manager, Mr Ambrose.
In the half-year to 30 June 1917 the Corporation Gas Works carbonised 2,879 tons of coal and produced 30,954,900 cubic feet of gas, an average yield of 10,751 cubic feet a ton, the manager, A. J. Ambrose, reported. In the same months 2,640 feet of new mains were laid and 20 new services installed, and a new rotary exhauster was put in place; the old one had been in continuous use for more than six years.
In the 1920s A. J. Ambrose wanted to modernise the works, but there were not the funds for a new carbonising plant of vertical retorts. He installed a complete gasification plant instead, a design patented by the Australian Gas Light Company engineer Herbert Wood. At about £6,000 it was relatively inexpensive and could be erected in three months, and Ambrose hoped it would boost the town's gas supply without too great an increase in its debt.