The museum celebrates the city's proud railways history and, despite being forced to close for several months due to the pandemic, has quickly become a popular attraction for locals and visitors alike.

It has again proved there is an appetite for the past and Bathurst is leading the way in seeking to showcase the lived experience of previous generations.

The museum's first anniversary is rolling round just as a group of Australian Labor Party heavyweights, led by former NSW premier Barrie Unsworth, are attempting to buy the former home of Gough Whitlam when it goes to auction this weekend.

The former prime minister lived in the mid-1950s home in Cabramatta for more than 20 years until 1978, three years after his dramatic exit from The Lodge.

It was his home during one of the most tumultuous and most exciting periods in Australian federal politics and a consortium seeking to raise money to buy the home, calling themselves the Whitlam Heritage Home Fund, would like to see it restored to how it was when the Whitlam family lived there before being turned into a museum and learning centre.

Sound familiar?

Like Gough Whitlam, Ben Chifley was one of the great heroes of the Australian Labor movement and, like Mr Whitlam, Mr Chifley remained living in his modest family home even while holding the nation's top job.

The Chifley Home is today a glimpse of Australian life in the 1940s and 1950s and a Whitlam Home could provide a similar trip back to the 1960s and 1970s.

Bathurst has shown it can be done and Saturday's auction will determine if it can be done again. Let's hope so.