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It's hard to believe 2000 gold miners lived in and around St Bathans in the late 1860's. The numerous shops and 12 of the 13 hotels are long gone, but evidence of mining is all around. Water cannons have created an almost mystical moonscape. In 1864 Kildare Hill loomed over St Bathans. Within relatively few years gold mining reduced it to a 58m deep pit that’s now the Blue Lake, popular for swimming and other water sports. The intense blue is due to minerals in the water.

St Bathans is a great place to explore. There are wonderful mud brick cottages: some show their age, others have been sympathetically restored. Next to the reputedly haunted mud brick Vulcan Hotel – stay in Room 1 at your peril – is the public hall built in the 1880's complete with sprung wooden dance floor. Of the two churches, the corrugated iron clad St Albans Church is perhaps most interesting. Prefabricated in England, the church was gifted to St Bathans by sheep station owner Frederick Dalgety, the founder of the stock and station agency, Dalgety & Co. The grandest building still standing is the two-storey, government-issue Post Office, built in 1902 and still open for business.

A visit to St Bathans isn’t complete without a detour to Cambrians, a few kilometres south. Cambrians was founded by Welsh miners and many of their mud-brick cottages remain as holiday homes. The nearby diggings are mostly overgrown with broom.

St Bathans Public Hall with the Vulcan Hotel next door	The size of the Post Office building shows just how important St Bathans once was. Now it’s a sleepy hamlet of around 10 permanent residents and the hotel’s soccer playing dog.
Now guessing how St Bathans’ lake got its name Photo: Matthew Sole

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