About The Ophir

Ophir, where Summer Hill Creek meets Lewis Ponds Creek between Orange and Bathurst, is where payable gold was first found in Australia, in February 1851. The discovery started the gold rushes and remade the country, and it is genuinely a story of both cities rather than either alone. That shared founding fact is the masthead's name, and a quiet nod to its method: the value here lies in what sits beneath the surface, found by those willing to dig.

The Central West is anchored by two near-twin cities, Bathurst and Orange, each about 43,500 people, ringed by the rural shires of Cabonne, Blayney and Oberon and the Lachlan Valley towns to the west. Over the region sit some of the heaviest layers of any inland district: the largest renewable-energy build in the country, three major mines, a hospital redevelopment program, a university across three campuses, and a genuine visitor economy. The public record of all this, the business papers, project pages, budget documents, registers and releases, is rich, and very little of it gets read end to end.

We read it. The Ophir answers the standing questions of anyone who lives here: what did my council actually decide, and what does it cost me? What is being built near me, and is it on time? What is the energy transition doing to the district? Is the health system delivering? Every factual claim in every story links to the primary source we actually read, and the way the site is made is set out plainly on how this site works.

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News tips, corrections and advertising enquiries all go through the tips page. Tips can be anonymous, and every claim is verified against primary sources before anything is published.