Bathurst

Distinguished and Famous people from Bathurst

Bathurst's connections with national life include a railway worker who became prime minister and a journalist who helped establish the Australian War Memorial. Both were born here, although their adult lives followed quite different paths.

🤝 Ben Chifley

Ben Chifley was born in Bathurst in 1885 and worked his way through railway employment to become a locomotive driver. Union activity and an interest in economic conditions helped draw him into politics. He represented the Bathurst-centred federal seat of Macquarie and served as prime minister from 1945 to 1949. He and his wife Elizabeth retained their Busby Street home, now preserved as a museum. Its domestic furnishings provide a particularly modest setting for the story of a national leader.

📚 Charles Bean

Charles Bean was born in Bathurst in 1879, where his father was headmaster of All Saints' College. His family moved to England when he was ten. After work in law and journalism, he became Australia's official First World War correspondent and later its official historian. His wartime diaries and notebooks formed an important foundation for that writing. He was also central to creating the Australian War Memorial, bringing together historical records, objects and commemoration on a national scale.

🌾 Allan Callaghan

Allan Callaghan was born at Perthville in 1903 and attended its public school and Bathurst High before studying agriculture at the University of Sydney. At Roseworthy, students knew him as The Doc. He revised teaching, relaxed oppressive student rules and strengthened the scientific basis of farm management, with initiatives in dairying, plant breeding and wine studies. Later he directed South Australian agriculture and chaired the Australian Wheat Board, using scientific knowledge and diplomatic skills to develop markets. His working life linked experiments in crops with the institutions and relationships needed to put agricultural knowledge into practice.