AN ambitious project to share the history of Bathurst’s most iconic buildings has started with the unveiling of a new interpretive sign outside the Machattie Park Cottage.
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The sign details the history of the 1890 Queen Anne-style cottage that was originally the home of Machattie Park’s first head gardener, Alfred Patterson.
Much of the information comes from the pages of Graham Lupp’s two-volume book Building Bathurst 1815-1915, which he completed as a bicentenary project with the support of Bathurst Regional Council.
Historian Robin McLachlan has also contributed to the project.
Mr Lupp was on hand for the unveiling of the first interpretive sign on Thursday and said his goal was to have signs installed outside all of Bathurst’s historic buildings.
“When you go to places like Yass, Mudgee and Forbes they’re all over this, even though they are smaller towns than us,” he said.
“You could find all this information in newspapers or even my book, but these signs are for the benefit of people just wandering by.
“It’s important to do this so all this information is not just forgotten.”
Mr Lupp said other Machattie Park buildings earmarked for signage included the bandstand rotunda, fernery and Grand (Crago) Fountain.
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John Payne, who worked with Mr Lupp as the editor of Building Bathurst over a five-year period, said the information included on the interpretive signage helped “humanise” the buildings.
“A lot of the information is extracted from Building Bathurst which was an architectural history but also focused on the people who designed and built these buildings,” he said.
Councillor Jess Jennings, another keen advocate for protecting Bathurst’s heritage, shared his personal links to the Machattie Park Cottage at Thursday’s unveiling.
Cr Jennings said his grandmother, who arrived in Bathurst in 1950 as a World War 2 refugee migrant, had several exhibitions of her pottery and painting works at the cottage.
“One of these is one of my earliest childhood memories, running around the display of pots on exhibition when I was about four or five years old,” he said.
