This PM's home in Bathurst is frozen in time ... as if he has just stepped out

It's an unexpectedly poignant exercise wandering through the South Bathurst home of Ben Chifley, Australia's 16th prime minister, the "man of the people" who led the nation through its postwar years. He was born in this NSW city - Australia's oldest inland European settlement - and called it home his entire life. To Chifley the PM, the best thing about a trip overseas "was coming down Browns Hill into Bathurst", as panels in the Chifley Home and Education Centre attest.

The modest semi-detached house on Busby Street where Chifley lived with his wife Elizabeth from 1914 until his death - by cardiac arrest in Canberra's Kurrajong Hotel - in 1951 is snap-frozen in the 1940s. It's almost as though the Chifleys might have just walked out. There are salt and pepper shakers in the pantry; a box of washing powder sits by the laundry sink; and the dining room table is set for dinner.

The Chifleys never had children, and were devoted to each other. He was opposition leader when he died. In Bathurst for his state funeral, prime minister Robert Menzies called on Elizabeth at Busby Street. She lived here another 11 years and died, at the age of 76, in her bedroom. We stand in the small room today, with its pink bedspread and curtains, and a hatbox sitting atop the wardrobe.

On our weekend in Bathurst, we had already come across Mr Chifley the day before, at the Railway Museum, set up in the former Railway Institute Building and garnering awards since its opening in 2020. In the decades after its violent wresting from the Wiradjuri people, Bathurst became a gold rush town, and then later, a railway town. Chifley was a locomotive driver and railway unionist, his pathway into politics. But while Chifley is king of his Busby Street castle, the star here is an enormous model of the Great Western Line from Tarana to Bathurst, depicting the 1950s and 1960s. It's fun to look around for tiny details, like lilliputian apiarists tending their bees, a farmer and his dog corralling a herd of sheep, and trackside advertisements for Goanna salve and Lan-Choo tea.

Yep, Bathurst is definitely a place where you can nerd out - it's also home to the Australian Fossil and Mineral Museum, showcasing a rare and important collection of 5000 objects "billions of years in the making". And drive a little out of town for an attraction that turns the eccentricity dial to 10. Abercrombie House was built in the 1870s by the pioneering pastoralist Stewart family. The Morgan family moved in in 1969 - and have spent the decades since in a continuous cycle of restoring and preserving the labyrinthine 50-room, Scottish baronial mansion. It and its grounds and outbuildings are open Wednesday to Sunday to the public, who can wander the eclectic rooms beholding all manner of antiques, collectables, artworks and family memorabilia. Sometimes, it can be hard to know where to rest one's eye.

We bump into Christopher Morgan, a small child when his family took on Abercrombie, in the grand ballroom. He and his wife Xanthe spent nearly three months in 2008 applying 6800 one-inch squares of Thai gold leaf to the ceiling; beneath this shimmering spectacle, visitors can, on select dates, enjoy high tea (BYO champagne) as a harpist plays live music in the background.

It's fitting that we're mainlining some history around Bathurst on the weekend of the annual Heritage Trades Trail. It's held every year as part of the city's Autumn Colours Heritage Festival (on March 12 to May 10 this year) to showcase traditional trades and crafts - dozens and dozens of them, from the making of soap, knives, rope, paper, lace and leather saddles, to blacksmithing, wooden furniture and barrel making, even the arcane skill of church art restoration.

The showground is where it happens, in historic pavilions that soar overhead, and in the grounds outside where there's room for pursuits such as drystone walling and cooking your own damper. Outside is the sound of whip cracking and folksy bush tunes played by a live band. The cavernous inside echoes with the sound of talking and tools. So many humans, working with their hands, eager to share the love of what they do. There are workshops galore for all-comers - you can learn how to weave, print your own silk scarf, make a "hussif" (needle case) or a basket or a felted bag.

A line of folks from Bathurst and District Artisans are spinning wool straight from the sheep's back, in a Cancer Council-endorsed fundraiser to make a child's jumper from absolute scratch. We watch the 11am shearing demonstration, a merino-cross skilfully stripped of its fleece by a burly shearer wielding traditional blades. My view is blocked for a time by a boy in an Akubra hat with a goggle-eyed-frog backpack, as captivated as everybody else. There are plenty of families around, and I can see the attraction in bringing young kids here, to show them this alternative, artisan vision of human endeavour, entirely divorced from screens and AI.

The writer was a guest of Visit Central NSW and Bathurst Regional Council