THE shattering news that more than 200 jobs will be lost at Lithgow’s Angus Place Colliery serves to highlight the luxury Bathurst enjoys with its diversified economy.
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Lithgow has always been a coal town and the whole region tends to rise and fall on activity in the surrounding mines.
So when Centennial Coal announced this week it would be mothballing the colliery – at a cost of 268 jobs -– it hit the town like a sledge hammer.
Most of those 268 workers live in and around Lithgow and many have families to feed.
A town the size of Lithgow simply cannot absorb those jobs and many of the out-of-work miners will have no choice but to leave for greener pastures.
That means fewer families shopping at the local stores and fewer children in the local schools. The impacts just go on and on.
Of course, Bathurst is far from immune to these sort of job losses, as we’ve seen in recent years with the closure of Kirkconnell Correctional Centre and Downer EDI, and the downgrading of the Simplot plant.
And every job lost in the Central West means one less potential shopper for our stores, as well.
But our region does not rely as heavily on a single industry as Lithgow and so job losses in one sector can be offset by increased activity in another.
Education remains the biggest employer in town and that industry is as recession-proof as any. Then we have solid manufacturing and agriculture industries, a strong building and construction industry, healthy retail sector and growing tourism industry.
Bathurst may not have enjoyed the incredible booms that mining has brought to many regional centres in recent years, but nor do we suffer the terrible busts. And that’s a good news story our region should be proud to share.