Central West (New South Wales)


The Central West is a region of New South Wales, Australia. The region is geographically in central and eastern New South Wales, in the area west of the Blue Mountains, which are west of Sydney. It has an area of. The region includes the area meteorologically defined as the Central Tablelands, located in the eastern part of the region.
Major population and service centres in the Central West include Bathurst, Orange, Lithgow, Cowra, Mudgee and Parkes. Bathurst and Orange are home to campuses of Charles Sturt University, and Lithgow housing the University of Notre Dame Regional Clinical School.

Cities and towns

The Central West includes the large regional centres of Bathurst and Orange; the towns of Cowra, Mudgee, Parkes and Lithgow; and smaller centres, such as Oberon, Blayney, Forbes, Canowindra, Cudal, Molong, Grenfell, West Wyalong, Portland, Wallerawang, Condobolin, Rylstone, Kandos, Gulgong and Eugowra.

Demography and area

The following local government areas are contained within the region:

Terrain

The Central West's east is higher, wetter and hillier and supports orchards, vineyards, vegetable-growing and pastoralism. The west is flatter and drier and supports grain crops and pastoralism.

Major highways

The Central West region is traversed by the Great Western Highway, the Mid-Western Highway, the Mitchell Highway, the Newell Highway and the Castlereagh Highway.

Media

The Central West has several radio stations, including 97.9 2LVR, 105.1 2GZFM, 105.9 Star FM, 107.9 Move FM, 95.5 ROK FM, 107.5 Community Radio, 103.5 Rhema FM and 1089AM — a commercial station that gets most of its programming from 2SM in Sydney. Other electronic media are represented by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with both television and radio broadcasting; and by television stations Prime7, WIN, and Southern Cross Nine.
Two major newspapers are published in the region, the Central Western Daily newspaper is published in Orange and the Western Advocate in Bathurst. Numerous other local papers serve the remaining large towns.

History

The Central West area was originally inhabited by the Wiradjuri people. The first white explorer, George Wilson Evans, entered the Lachlan Valley in 1815. He named the area the Oxley Plains after his superior the surveyor-general, John Oxley. In 1817 he deemed the area unfit for white settlement. A Military Depot was established not long after at Soldiers Flat near present-day Billimari. Arthur Ranken and James Sloan, from Bathurst, were amongst the first white settlers on the Lachlan. They moved to the area in 1831.
In the 1850s many gold prospectors passed through headed for gold fields at Lambing Flat and Grenfell.