Keightley Avenue and Roberts Close
On 28 April 2021 Council approved a Development Application for a 205 lot residential subdivision off Richardson Street and Governors Parade in the suburb of Windradyne. The subdivision includes six new roads as well as the extension of Richardson Street and Governors Parade.
Council at its Ordinary Meeting held 18 October 2023 adopted the names Astley Close and McMillan Avenue, amongst others, for the subdivision. The names Astley Close and McMillan Avenue were rejected by the Geographic Names Board (GNB) because of their similarity to existing road names in the Bathurst Regional LGA (Apsley and McGillan respectively).
The following names have therefore been chosen to replace to two names rejected by the GNB.
| Name | Suffix | Significance |
| Keightley | Avenue | Caroline Keightley On her death in December 1898, newspapers across Australia remembered Caroline Keightley, the “Heroine of Rockley”, and the dramatic story of her dash on the night of 24 October 1863 to ransom her husband from bushrangers holding him on their Dunn’s Plains property. While the facts of the story vary with the telling, all agree that the Ben Hall gang threatened a revenge killing of Henry Keightley for the shooting of one of their fellow bushrangers. Caroline pleaded for his life and a bargain was struck that Henry would be spared for a £500 ransom. With a noon deadline to meet, she raced to Blackdown near Kelso to seek the help of her father, Henry Rotton. The ransom was duly raised with a 4 am visit to Bathurst’s Commercial Bank and Henry’s life was spared. For Caroline, life was never again quite the same. Rolf Boldrewood wrote her into his classic, Robbery Under Arms, and for a time Caroline took to the stage starring in a drama, Bail Up, re-enacting her midnight race to save her husband. Source: The Pillars of Bathurst |
| Roberts | Close | Mary Ann Roberts Mary Ann Roberts was the first colonial wife and mother to live in the Bathurst Settlement. With her three small children, she arrived in late 1816 on the completion of the family’s house, the first built in the Settlement. She was at the time the only woman living among the men employed building the settlement. Mary Ann’s partner and father of her children was Richard Lewis, the Settlement’s Superintendent. (They married in 1825.) In February 1817, Mary Ann Roberts gave birth to Louisa, the first colonial child born in inland Australia. The basic details of her life after arrival in Bathurst are not difficult to track. Widowed, she remarried in 1829, was the mother of six children born in the Bathurst area and became a woman of property. However, an enduring question remains – who was Mary Ann Roberts? Colonial records indicate she was born in the colony in 1792, but there is no record of her parentage. There are claimants offered by family historians linking her to their own convict ancestry, together with a theory her mother was Aboriginal and another that she was Jane Roberts, a convict on the transport Mary Ann. But, all lack credible evidence. Source: The Pillars of Bathurst |
A location plan and annotated plan of subdivision are available in the document library.
The names all have historical association with the area or district and comply with Bathurst Regional Council's Guidelines for the Naming of Roads.