Hill End

Discussion 5 posts |  Only members can post. Join?

About Hill End

HILL END is a former gold rush town in Evans Shire, New South Wales, 289 kilometres by road west of Sydney and 870 metres above sea-level. The Wiradjuri Aborigines inhabited the area before white settlement.

Alluvial gold was first discovered at nearby Tambaroora in 1851, which by 1854 was the most populous gold field in the colony with 26 public houses. Attention soon switched to Hill End in 1860, when Hawkins Hill was discovered. The most significant finds, including Holtermann's nugget, were made there and the major reef-mining took place from 1870 when more than 120 companies were active.

In 1874 yields began to decline, mines closed and prospectors moved to new goldfields. Shops, hotels and other buildings were abandoned. It was officially proclaimed a Historic Site in 1967 and is now a popular "gold era" tourist resort, administered by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, where some commercial gold mining still takes place.

The Holtermann Nugget, the largest mass of gold ever discovered (285 kg gross) was found on Hawkins Hill by the Star of Hope Gold Mining Co. in which Bernard Otto Holtermann (1838-1885) and Louis Beyers were partners. In 1874 Holtermann built a large home in Sydney and commissioned the photographer Beaufoy Merlin, and later Charles Bayliss, to photograph the chief towns and gold mining areas of NSW. The unique collection of wet plate photographs were exhibited at international exhibitions in Philadelphia (1876) and Paris (1878), and have since proved of immense historic value in documenting life on the gold fields of NSW.

Artists have been attracted to Hill End since the discovery of this ‘lost’ town by Donald Friend and Russell Drysdale in August 1947. Since then it has inspired some of the finest Australian painters including not only Friend and Drysdale, but Jeffrey Smart, John Olsen, David Strachan, Margaret Olley, Brett Whitely, Michael Johnson, John Firth-Smith and Colin Lanceley. Several cottages are now regularly used as artist’s retreats and a thriving artistic community calls it home.

FURTHER READING: Barbara Muffins, Margaret Martin and Douglass Baglin, Historic Hill End (1976); Malcolm Drinkwater, Hill End Gold (1982); National Parks and Wildlife Service, NSW, Exploring Hill End: Hawkins Hill (1989) and Sites of Wondrous Treasure — the Story of Hill End (1989); Bruce Goodwin, Gold and People (c. 1992); Gavin Wilson and Lou Klepac, The Artists of Hill End (1995).