Tar Holding Structure

A tar holding structure inside the Bathurst Gasworks holds the residue of decades of coal-gas production. The vessel is a heavy steel tank with riveted seams, set on a concrete base, with access fittings and overflow piping at the top. Surfaces are uniformly corroded; the lower courses of the tank carry the deepest pitting where moisture has worked at the metal. Crumbling concrete walls behind the tank are stained with the dark residue of long contact with coal tar. The space is enclosed enough to hold the smell of the material it stored, even decades after the last fill.

Coal tar was a profitable by-product of coal-gas production for most of the gasworks era. The Bathurst Gasworks separated tar from the crude gas in the condenser and purifier plant and stored it in several tar holding structures across the site, of which this is one. By the late twentieth century, tar had become the site's defining contamination problem. Bathurst Regional Council entered a Voluntary Remediation Agreement with the New South Wales EPA in 2006, and council-led work in 2008 and 2009, funded by the Environmental Trust, removed the tarry wastes. Contamination of soil and groundwater remained. Asbestos was detected in air monitoring in November 2023. The site has been under investigation by WSP Australia for Crown Lands since 2022 and remains disused.