GOLDEN OPPORTUNITIES
The European history of the Orange district of central-western NSW goes back almost to the foundation of colony. A steady flow of pastoralists followed in the wake of the crossing of the Blue Mountains as squatters and their stock took up runs on the vast plains west of the Great Dividing Range. The trickle became a torrent with the discovery of Australia’s first payable gold deposits at Ophir in 1851. Further gold was uncovered throughout the region in the 1860s
