St Bathans

In the tiny blip on the map that is St Bathans, the clatter of cloven hoof has long replaced the clang of gold miners’ boots. At the pitch of the 1860s gold rush fever, a couple of thousand Irish, Chinese and Welsh miners skirmished for gold and fortune in the nearby St Bathans and Hawkdun Ranges.

With an historic walks brochure in hand, it’s a pleasant amble past the town’s remaining two dozen or so historic cottages and the 1892 St Patrick’s church. The well-kept Constable House and Gaol is available for an overnight’s stay, but we have booked a night in room number two at the Vulcan Hotel, the only such establishment left of 15 in the town’s heyday.

Apart from the legendary, but shy female ghost in room number one, we’re the hotel’s only guests. Our room has a washbasin and chamber pot and there are showers and loos down the hall. It’s homely and clean, like staying in your grandmother’s spare bedroom.

When I ask one of the locals who drop into Mike’s Bar how many people live here, he counts them up. “Four, I think.” That’s not including our tour leader, Jack, who drags us out the hotel door for an hour’s trot around nearby Blue Lake. Four-legged Jack is a patient guide, happy to stop when we pause to gaze at the blinding-white whipped cream hills surrounding the ice-blue lake.

His duty done, Jack curls up in the hotel’s dining room for a nap.

Jude Kavanagh, the proprietor, says: “Dinner is lamb rack. Is that OK?” I’m not sure what would happen if it weren’t OK, but it is. Country-sized portions arrive under mountains of carrots, potatoes, broad beans and gravy. There’s pudding, too, but no room to stuff it in.

St Bathans at night is black as sin and deeply silent; the ghost has apparently taken the night off from haunting. We wake at some eyeball-cracking hour in a cold clear dawn to the sound of tiny hooves clattering up the street. I jump out of bed in time to glimpse a sea of sheep baa-ing up the main street. It’s the Friday afternoon crowd, going home on a Monday morning.