Dave Thomson, a fifth-generation Hill End resident, shares his organic farm with his wife, painter Rebecca Wilson. The pair are quintessential Hill End residents – creative, industrious and with their fair share of stories about the historic village they call home.

Off the road to Tambaroora, the Arch glints gold in the morning sun. Found in the Golden Gully, the imposing structure is just one of the strange formations made by the long-gone miners who worked the yellow ground.

When artist Jeannie Littlewood moved to Hill End she brought with her Cocky Girl, a tame cockatoo aged in its mid-50s. 

The streets of Hill End are quiet in the evenings, though when these buildings were first erected the town was deafened by the din of stamper batteries.

Hill End has been painted by artists from far and wide – but it was 20th century painters Russel Drysdale and Donald Friend who first immortalised the town in Australian art.

Pete Sparks mans the Royal Hotel bar, pouring drinks for a motley crowd of dusty shearers, local farmers and artists.

Erected in 1872, the Royal Hotel once competed with twenty-eight other pubs for the custom of miners. Now it stands alone, the sole drinking establishment still open for business.

The tombstones of Tambaroora Cemetery give a tragic insight into the lives and deaths of early miners and their families.

You’re surrounded by ghosts in Hill End, says award-winning artist Rosemary Valadon, but her series Four Seasons pays homage to the abundance of life in the town.

Landscape painter Luke Sciberras has always brought the outside world into the places he works and lives. Hill End locals warn us not to eat anything he offers – it might be roadkill, they say with a grin.

Luke Sciberras reclines on a bed in his Hill End studio. Though he painted the town extensively when he first arrived, it’s now something more than a muse – a home.

People, both locals and those from afar, have met to talk and drink at the Royal Hotel for more than a century. 

Photographer Bill Moseley’s studio is filled with images captured by antiquarian processes as old as the 19th century building itself.

School principal Chris Grossett fossicks for gold in his spare time, using cutting edge technologies to follow in the footsteps of those who founded the town. 

It takes a roaring fire to warm potter Lino Alvarez’s huge studio, but he needs the space: he creates large ceramics for restaurants and homes the world-over.