Growing up, Mr Josh says, willows and blackberries “were overtaking the creeks to the extent where you couldn’t even get to the water’s edge”.

Growing up, many Bathurstians would have seen a lot worse when it came to the treatment of the environment.

Discharges into rivers and creeks. Unchecked land clearing. Widespread pollution.

There was a time when professing a concern for the environment would have been seen at best as an eccentricity, or at worse as an impediment to progress.

But times have changed, and so have our attitudes.

That’s why it’s good to see Bathurst is set to become Contamination Central under a new collaboration with Central West councils.

The name is never going to attract the tourists, but the scheme will bring new attention to the contaminated sites from the past that Bathurst, like so many other councils, needs to find a way to deal with.

They are not going to go away, and they are not going to get any less dangerous.

Ignoring them will not help, either.

The collaborative nature of the project will be one of its biggest assets.

As councils are figuring out – or being forced to figure out, under the spectre of amalgamation – they can achieve more by pooling their resources and knowledge than they ever can alone.

This contamination project will pool the member councils’ expertise in a way that will benefit all of those involved.

So let the hard work and the difficult decisions begin. 

And speaking of difficult decisions, what’s happening with the old gasworks site these days?