Despite the purpose of the session being to provide residents with information on the city’s new brand strategy, debate quickly turned to the logo that was designed as part of the strategy. 

The logo, featuring a brightly coloured ‘B’ with the tagline ‘Bathurst, forever young’, has received backlash online from residents who felt it did not accurately reflect Bathurst. 

According to the people behind the strategy, the tagline represents the way Bathurst keeps reinventing itself. 

The facilitators of the information session, destination development manager Lucy White and Visitor Information Centre manager Dan Cove, were quick to point out that the logo was a very small part of the overall strategy.

Audience member Stuart Pearson, a new resident, said that residents largely weren’t questioning the strategy, but instead the way the logo represented Bathurst.

“I actually have no problems with the strategy, the process of going and distilling what it is that people think about Bathurst is a very good process and I applaud the council and yourselves for being involved in that, but the distillation of the essence of Bathurst into something that we’re looking at on the screen was poorly executed,” he said. 

“Bathurst is a city of firsts. I’m just wondering why that wasn’t pulled out?”

Business owner Martin King, who has been in the city for around 40 years, said that the heritage of Bathurst that he loved was forgotten in the logo and tagline.

“I loved Bathurst. My wife asked me where I want to live, I said ‘I’d like to live in your town, because when I come to your town everything is full and vibrant’,” he said.

“The old shops that are long gone in England ... they’re all still there in Bathurst.

“This is why I wanted to live in Bathurst, because it reminds me of the past in England.

“I love the town and I think it is fantastic and I’m 100 per cent behind Bathurst, but you’re not getting the right point here.”

Other criticisms for the logo were that ‘forever young’ made people think of funeral notices and that it didn’t reflect the diversity of the city and its residents. 

Although criticism of the logo and tagline was strong, there were people who supported it. 

Sam Renzaglia, one of the few younger people in the room, said that the image did resonate with him. 

“I can understand that some of you might be disatisfied with a slogan that talks about forever young, youthfulness, when you might not necessarily relate to that literally … but there is a lot that I see as being timeless in Bathurst in terms of that slogan,” he said.