Near a city rich in national institutions, Bywong Gold Town was never a shining attraction, a point its last operator Chris Fowler underlined for visiting schools.
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Mr Fowler took over the operation for a few years on behalf of the owner about 2000, catering mainly for year 5 and year 6 pupils and their teachers. He maintained its rough and ready condition to replicate the harshness of the gold rush era. "We could take the kids to 10-metre and 15-metre deep shafts and say, 'Look down there, kids your age worked with their dads down there'," Mr Fowler said. That children could get dirty only added to its appeal.
The long-abandoned tourist facility built to replicate Bywong's gold mining settlement is on the market. On 24 hectares, the listing with Jan Ladmore of All Real Estate NSW includes replica iron and timber huts, an original seepage well built in 1896 by three contract Chinese diggers, an old dray and old machinery.
According to Errol Lea-Scarlett's book Gundaroo, Thomas Alchin discovered a rich reef of gold on the selection of James Millynn, at the present Millynn Road, in 1894. By mid 1895 there were 300 prospectors on the site, and Bywong village was formed. Stores, a post office and a public school were established.
A surveyor laid out a village with four streets – Burbong, Bungendore, Burra and Gundaroo. A public school was opened in October 1895. By 1896 the gold was running out, and the village was already in decline. The school closed in 1906.
Mr Fowler said gold had been found along an escarpment running to Lake George. "Mines were all over the place, it is a big part of our history that no one knows about," he said. Well before Bywong, William McEnally discovered the gold-bearing Macs Reef at the top of a steep hill near the present Newington Road. A town named Newington was quickly established with three stores, a butchery and a hotel, before that source ran out.
Joe Azzopardi, a former Canberra builder and potter who lived next door to Bywong Town for 30 years, told The Canberra Times in 2012 previous tour operators Norman and Joyce Moore travelled from Queanbeyan daily to run a kiosk and host coach tours from schools.
Although not the owner, Mr Fowler did spend money on the place, but said it needed a great deal more. He believes an operator would need to spend between $250,000 to $2 million to reopen Bywong as a tourist facility. "Nothing is original out there, it was developed in the 1960s and 1970s, some of it not historically correct. There was a blacksmith's forge and old tools that would make a blacksmith drool. A constant problem was keeping motorbikes out of the place."
