HILL End historian Malcolm Drinkwater has found a new way to tell the region's rich stories.
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Mr Drinkwater - the author of a number of books about the gold rush village north of Bathurst - has recently put the finishing touches on a documentary that aims to answer questions he has been hearing for almost 30 years.
"I had watched so many documentaries and from the perspective of being in the goldfield, researching the history, their information was wrong," he said.
"Plus, they always focused on the Victorian goldfields, not the fact that the start of Australia's gold rushes was here and the world's biggest piece of gold came from here. We just didn't seem to exist."
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Mr Drinkwater's decision was made when he hosted a French documentary crew in February.
"They came out to cover the [Sydney] Mardi Gras, but decided they'd pick five or six other sites in Australia, so when they went back they had a series on Australia," he said.
One of those sites was South Australia's Coober Pedy and another was Mr Drinkwater's History Hill museum.
"The straw that broke the camel's back for me was that they'd [the documentary crew] ask a question and I'd get back, 'I don't like that answer, do it again'," Mr Drinkwater said. "And I'd think I can't change history; that's the way it was.
"I said to the wife [Daphne] we can't do anything about this unless we do it ourselves. So I wrote a documentary."
The result, Gold And B.O. Holtermann, begins at the beginning - what gold is and how it occurs - as well as covering fossicking, the gold rushes and 19th century gold, photography and business identity Bernard Holtermann.
"I have actually done it the wrong way," Mr Drinkwater said of the documentary. "Everything I've done in there is against the normal rules and practices of making a documentary.
"There's no walking. If there's talking, it's a voiceover and you see what we're talking about and it's straight to the point.
"It's taken 50 years to do because I've had an interest in gold and lived in Hill End for 55 years.
"I washed my first dish when I was 12. And that got the interest started. So you've got all this accumulated knowledge since you're 12 that you can then put down.
"And when you run a museum, you get asked questions. So we've had the museum out there for 29 years and the documentary answers the majority of the questions that the public would ask: what's white gold? What's rose gold? What does a carat mean?
"My wife said this documentary has done you the world of good; it's taught you how not to waft on. Because I had to go back and say now how can I say that in a shorter length of time?"
Mr Drinkwater has also produced a third edition of The German-Australian Called Holtermann, his examination of the life of the fascinating figure.
Not only does it contain Holtermann's 1874 diary, it contains a sketch from Holtermann's great-grandson John showing where the famous Holtermann photographs were kept in a Sydney shed.
The new edition contains the second edition in its entirety with 60 new pages at the end.
"I'd go back and visit all the Holtermans [the second 'N' was dropped off during the Second World War] and each time I did, they'd bring something else out of the cupboard because they got to know me a bit better," Mr Drinkwater said.
"Even though I'd known them since 1984 when I did the first edition, they were just getting more comfortable."
The documentary Gold And B.O. Holtermann is available at the History Hill website, on ebay, at the Bathurst Visitor Information Centre and the general store and Northey's Store in Hill End.
