The bicentenary of Bathurst (1815-2015), Australia's oldest inland settlement, offered many research challenges for a Charles Sturt University (CSU) historian.

Dr Rob McLachlan, adjunct senior lecturer in history at the CSU School of Humanities and Social Sciences in Bathurst, recently completed the book From Flag Staff to Town Square - A Guide to the Government Settlement Heritage Trail, a contribution to the city's 200^th birthday celebrations.

"Governor Lachlan Macquarie established Bathurst on 7 May 1815, but no structures remain to be seen from the first settlement," Dr McLachlan said. "This makes the guidebook, and the interpretive signs developed for the bicentenary, particularly useful for visitors being able to transport themselves back to those first years of settlement in Bathurst."

From Flag Staff to Town Square is the latest, but not final, product in a research project that began about three years ago, based on Dr McLachlan's periodic research into the site for about 10 years before.

"The guidebook only took a few months to put together as it is based on research and writing undertaken for Bathurst Regional Council Archaeological Management Plan (AMP), which took a couple of years (2012-13)," he said.

Dr McLachlan said that establishing the wider significance of Macquarie's Flag Staff, which was formally gazetted on 10 June 1815, together with helping to fix its exact location, as among the best and most interesting experiences and developments encountered during his research.

"That this work has now been translated into the reinstated Macquarie's Flag Staff is about as good as it gets for an historian," Dr McLachlan said. "The wider community has enthusiastically embraced the notion that the site of Macquarie's Flag Staff is a very significant heritage and responded by reinstating it.

"Beyond this one specific site, there is as well a growing public awareness of and interest in the wider early settlement precinct. The guidebook, together with the interpretive trail, will support that interest. For an historian, especially, a public historian, it doesn't get much better than that."

Dr McLachlan said working through masses of research material in locations such as the NSW State Records at Kingswood could be very challenging.

"You don't always know what you are looking for and even if you do, it can be a search for a small needle in a very large haystack, or two," he said. "Historians are much assisted today by so much information being digitised and online but, unfortunately, in my experience, the speed and reliability of the internet in rural Australia is really not up to the task of supporting online research.

"I only have words of praise and thanks for the utmost cooperation I received from libraries and archives when obtaining the art work and maps used in the guidebook. Obtaining digital copies was part of an earlier project undertaken for Bathurst Regional Council. I still rate the Cox's Road Map as a significant discovery, as well as the two town plans for Macquarie's proposed town of 1815. These items were previously unknown, to the best of what I can determine."

Dr McLachlan says the work of researching the settlement site is ongoing, and his future project is to compile a more detailed and comprehensive book-length study of the Bathurst Government Settlement, 1815 to 1840s.

"My research is far from finished, and there are puzzles still to solve," he said.

From Flag Staff to Town Square - A Guide to the Government Settlement Heritage Trail is available for sale at the Bathurst Visitor Information Centre for $12.95.