Orange is a real hub, for all its social problems, so can be a good base if you are trying to work in the rest of NSW outside the coastal area. There are tons of major food stores and department stores unlike the smaller towns around the area. 100,000 people in the greater area come here to shop and do business. If you have the money and the connections, life can be very good out here. On the other hand, if things are in struggle street, forget it. You can spend a lot of money on accommodation here - it is dearer than other cities and towns nearby like Bathurst.
The main problem is getting known locally. It seems like you have to be born here to get any credibility. Hence I chose to get customers outside the area in Sydney and Brisbane and work via the Internet, fax and phone. The locals are cliquey. People are very frugal here (tight, mean). There are a lot of very rich people living here - mainly landowners - who tend to be snobby and very arrogant. It makes life very hard here. The town is incredibly insular - may be its Celtic roots. They are very musical so that is a bonus.
One small light at end of the tunnel: Orange PCYC. It gets the kids off the street and out of mischief and gives them a chance to learn a sport or skill to get them connected and going in life. I even wrote a letter to the Central Western Daily in 2003 praising the PCYC getting new PCs for after-school activities which people all over read and commented on! That goes down to my strong belief in community efforts doing wonders to rebuild the lost youth etc. PCYC at Orange (Byng St) hold a computer fair there about every 3 months. Orange PCYC is running a purpose built centre at Anzac Park in Orange built by the Orange City Council, using the money from the sale of their Byng St premises to pay for the new facilities. This opened in July 2009, 3 years late.
Also getting safe and quality premises is very hard. Most real estates rent rather low quality premises. There is a lot of bureaucracy here. Locals take tons of liberties and youth are very abusive if you get street rats. Security is very important as there are plenty of drug addicts breaking into houses.
The Post Office is a stickler for detail which makes things harder.
The Commonwealth Bank is very stuffy.
The train and bus services are OK to Sydney or Dubbo. Do not take anything over 2 bags or they rouse on you. Appearances seem to matter out here - if you look casual they are hard on you, if you look professional and well-dressed you are respected. Book Countrylink tickets online to save money and save the congestion and hassle of buying a ticket at Lithgow between bus and train connections. There is a little airport on the way to Bathurst - 40 mins to Sydney Mascot Airport.
Rex Airlines fly here from Sydney and other parts of NSW, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania. In June 2006, Orange would not rename their reduction in landing fees partnership but called it subsidy so Rex refused to do business with Orange till they called the reduction in fees a partnership! Talk about a weird council. A dollar is a dollar in Orange - very tight - not strategic, just tragic.
If you don't have a car, there is very little you can do outside the city limits. Cycling is OK up to Mt Canobolas but the roads have bad edges and are well worn and narrow. The views are good though on the Cargo Rd out towards Nashdale orchards on the foothills of Mt Canobolas.
The weather is very harsh - they get storms, snow, hail, sleet and frosts in winter. There are some scenic spots like Mt Canobolas (1395m above sea level) and Lake Canobolas plus connections to national parks near Cowra including Ben Hall the bushranger's cave near Eugowra and Grenfell. There are two western roads: one to Forbes and one to Parkes. The Super Cheap Auto 1000 V8 Supercar race is only 45 kms east at Mt Panorama, Bathurst each October Long Weekend. At Easter, there is the Bathurst International Motor Festival. Orange gets the overflow of people from Bathurst rev-heads from NSW, Queensland and Victoria. Orange is also on the overland route from Broken Hill and Port Augusta en route to the Northern Territory. The Great Southern Railway from Sydney to Perth goes through Orange. You can also catch the XPT to Dubbo on the Newell Hwy, a major truck route connecting Melbourne with Brisbane. The road to Dubbo is called the Mitchell Hwy after Major Mitchell who discovered Victoria by going overland from Sydney to Portland Victoria and discovering the Henty Brothers had already got there before him from Tasmania in 1836! Dwight, our manager, has Mitchells in his forebears explaining the incredible desire to travel and explore! The Mitchells were great travellers. Major Mitchell has left cairns all over country Victoria and NSW telling where he had been!
Way out west of Orange (350km due west as the crow files) is Cobar where the CSA Mine is situated where they mine underground for copper. They have no maternity services, being 3 hours from Dubbo, the nearest hospital with a maternity unit, but are quite wealthy due to the mine.
Storage units are the best deal out here. Storage King Orange was bought by Alarmed Self Storage 500m south along Forest Rd in January 2006.
The farmers are more civil than the town people.
Orange Women's Netball team has won Central West competitions 10 years running! What a legend!
Wireless communications are flakey so one requires a land line to get cheap Internet access. CDMA is getting better but was replaced by much faster Next G.
Drivers in Orange speed and are VERY impatient. Be very careful if you are a pedestian. They do not look out for you! Orange is very dangerous if you are a pedestian. The cars race at the lights - lunatics. I hate going to the Post Office because of all the fierce round-abouts and traffic lights or shopping centre entries I have to cross to get from point A to point B. Drivers here are bitches when it comes to watching out for people outside their car! They even shout back at you if you shout at them! Drivers in Orange are totally arrogant bastards!
In 2003, Orange Council refused to put in a zebra-crossing opposite the Metro Hotel to K-Mart on Anson St, that's how pro-car this council is, all ego-maniacs. The council won't put in lights because it will slow-down traffic so everyone has to put up with dangerous traffic conditions to let the shopping centre grow in the middle of town.
In late 2007, the Orange City Council approved Woolworths building a new shopping centre near Waratahs in North Orange where all the growth is. They eventually saw reason! We are heading for a disaster or grid-lock in Orange in the next 5 or so years when traffic is so chaotic that the council have to start fixing up the traffic madness and getting rid of the massive congestion of traffic out of the main street and parallel back-streets. It's like 'take, take, take' and not giving back. What do you expect when the mayor John Davis is a used car salesman!
A pedestrian crossing was put in near Woolworths in Anson St after a 9 year old girl was pulled under a car at corner of Summer and Anson Sts in 2008. Citizens had to petition the council to get them to act and they enacted long-overdue plans to build the crossing. In 2009, taxi drivers thought there were not enough spaces in the cab rank outside Woolworths because the pedestrian crossing takes up room, but the crossing has stayed to the benefit of pedestrians.
The local NRMA (road assistance and maps) has shrunk to about 1/3 of its size in a little shop in Sale St as of about June 2006. People in Orange though driving many expensive cars, 4WDs, utes and tons of trucks, semi-trailers (live cattle and sheep and groceries and freight) and heavy equipment vehicles (huge mining borers) do not seem to care about paying for insurance so the local NRMA has had to scale back to cut costs. It may be a sign of the drought. I met a farmer once in late 2005 with a flat-bed truck with a transmission problem in Peisley St around 8pm at night stuck on an incline with no power in the vehicle to move it off the road. He just wanted someone to push his vehicle off the road and to scab someone to give him a tow. It's a bit sad how poor farmers are. They can't even afford a tow-truck or insurance. The previous person to rent the PO Box I have now used to run a towing business but it went broke. May be there is no money in cars and trucks out here. People just use them till they wear out (30-40 years). There is very little spent on infrastructure unless the local council pays for it in terms of roads and traffic lights. The RTA seems to focus on large jobs like the Sydney Cross City Tunnel or Lane Cove Tunnel but do not put much emphasis on the rural areas where cars and trucks get their transmissions and shock-absorbers hammered through bad roads. Everyone is always getting their car washed here or getting new tyres or shock-absorbers or wheel-alignments done to try and eek more use out of their ageing fleet. I just use the train and bus - State Government infrastructure - slow but cheaper and no on-going costs.
One sad thing are the local teenager hoons here. One was killed in a car crash and there was a big funeral at the Catholic Church opposite my house in May 2006. His organs were donated to about 5 people I think, so his life was not totally wasted. May be they need more care using BeFree2Go from the NRMA with maps and car assistance, driver training for such young, inexperienced drivers eager to get out and about with all their noisy mates and do squeelies in the main streets of Orange at 1am in the morning and reduction in drink-driving that is rife out here. The youth get all boozed up and kill themselves. It happens quite regularly, about once every month or 2. Alcohol is a big killer of young people out here on the country roads in and around Orange and for that matter right across the rural areas of Australia I would say. It's madness. There is too much testosterone and madness let loose and the young people kill themselves quite regularly. They need grounding or using the Internet or CDs to save having to hoon around. It's chaos for youth in rural areas, believe me! See RTA young people fatalities (PDF) - young people with P plates are 6 times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash between 10pm and 5am than other drivers, especially on Friday and Saturday nights when they are on the town. Skills raising by getting youth to learn to drive on speedways near Bathurst is being trialled in July 2009. This is a good idea. I did rally-driving near Stanwell Tops in my Suzuki Hatch and it helped me handle bad conditions such as dirt roads or losing control on corners.
Put lights on your bike as drivers will knock you down at night otherwise. Car drivers in Orange drive at full speed through roundabouts making exceedingly dangerous unless you stop at every intersection and look before crossing to save a massive accident. This is a form of bullying.
| intersection | town | crashes | fatalities | injuries | lat | long |
| Forbes Rd and Mitchell Hwy | Orange | 3 | 0 | 0 | -33.27486 | 149.08636 |
| Cox Ave | Orange | 8 | 0 | 4 | -33.29431 | 149.11464 |
| Hill St to Clinton St | Orange | 5 | 0 | 2 | ||
| Between Sale St and Peisley St | Orange | 79 | 2 | 4 | ||
| Hill St | Orange | 6 | 0 | 2 | ||
| Prince St to March St | Orange | 10 | 0 | 1 | ||
| Eyles St | Orange | 6 | 0 | 3 | ||
| Between Edward St and William St | Orange | 13 | 0 | 7 | ||
| Lone Pine Ave | Orange | 7 | 0 | 15 | ||
| Byng St to Hamer St | Orange | 5 | 0 | 9 | ||
| Elizabeth St | Orange | 7 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Barcelona Way to Monett Place | Orange | 4 | 0 | 4 | ||
| Gosling Creek | Orange | 3 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Lone Pine Ave to Barcelona Way (subtotal) | Orange | 157 | 3 | 91 | ||
| Millthorpe Rd and Vittoria Rd | Vittoria | 3 | 0 | 1 | ||
| Halfway House | Vittoria | 3 | 0 | 2 | ||
| Blayney Rd | Vittoria | 3 | 0 | 2 | ||
| Vittoria | 9 | 0 | 5 | |||
| Alexander St | West Bathurst | 8 | 0 | 1 | ||
| Dunkeld Rd to Bradwardine Rd | Bathurst | 3 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Bathurst | 11 | 0 | 1 | |||
| Hill St and Kite St | Molong | 3 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Shades Rd to Railway Bridge | Molong | 4 | 0 | 6 | ||
| Amaroo Rd | Molong | 13 | 0 | 2 | ||
| Amaroo Rd and Molong Creek | Molong | 5 | 0 | 4 | ||
| Gamboola Gate | Molong | 3 | 0 | 5 | ||
| Molong | 28 | 1 | 19 | |||
| Chelmsford St | Dubbo | 4 | 0 | 3 | ||
| Hawthorne St | Dubbo | 7 | 0 | 4 | ||
| Taylor St to Palmer St | Dubbo | 8 | 0 | 2 | ||
| Darling St | Dubbo | 5 | 0 | 1 | ||
| Wheelers Lane | Dubbo | 6 | 0 | 3 | ||
| Brisbane St | Dubbo | 6 | 0 | 2 | ||
| Gipps St to Hopetoun St | Dubbo | 20 | 0 | 14 | ||
| Dubbo | 56 | 0 | 29 | |||
| Wongarbon Rd | Wongarbon | 3 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Warne St | Wellington | 6 | 0 | 5 | ||
| Arthur St | Wellington | 4 | 0 | 2 | ||
| Burrendong Way | Wellington | 4 | 0 | 3 | ||
| Whiteley St and Maxwell St | Wellington | 21 | 0 | 11 | ||
| Percy St and Showground Rd | Wellington | 4 | 0 | 2 | ||
| Wellington | 39 | 0 | 23 | |||
| Back Swamp Rd | The Rocks | 3 | 1 | 3 | ||
| The Rocks Rd | The Rocks | 5 | 0 | 5 | ||
| The Rocks | 8 | 1 | 8 | |||
| Millthorpe Rd | Shadforth | 6 | 0 | 6 | ||
| Blayney Rd to Millthorpe Rd | Shadforth | 6 | 0 | 6 | ||
| Guanna Lane to Stathmore Lane | Belgravia | 3 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Douglas St to Highfield Lane | Geurie | 3 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Dunkeld Rd | Dunkeld | 3 | 0 | 2 | ||
| Marys Lane to Back Swamp Rd | Dunkeld | 3 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Hen and Chicken Lane and Bradwardine Rd | Dunkeld | 3 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Dunkeld | 9 | 0 | 2 | |||
| Beasley Rd to Phoenix Mine Rd | Lucknow | 3 | 0 | 1 |
Orange City Council seems to be pretty proactive. The current Mayor John Davis is pretty positive and gets things done. He and his staff are making the place more hospitable to newcomers with good signage on the main streets and improvements to kerb and guttering and intersections in the past 2 years. They are investing in the local showground with the ELF - Environmental Learning Facility - where sustainable energy use is demonstrated e.g. solar panels, rain tanks, cladding.
They are very 'green', trying to get the facade of the new $5M Police Station that is to be built over the next 2 years made more aesthetically pleasing to fit in with the heritage law courts and CBD area as a whole (100+ years old area) but caving in in the end because they realised most Government buildings are designed like boxes!
The Showgrounds was saved from being moved to Towac Park by people power in July 2009. This Showgrounds was used in the 1940s film '40,000 Horsemen' starring Chips Rafferty. I am so glad the council now pour $250,000/year to upgrading the facilities and seeing some of these landmark buildings fixed not let rot.
Orange Business is a Orange City Council and Orange Business Chamber business directory initiative - free listing if in the Orange area.
Orange has grown quickly in the past 2 years. There are 100s of new houses on the Molong Rd and out towards the new botanical gardens. Newcrest Mining at Cadia, Friskies at Blayney and local wineries and orchards seem to make the area very productive. There are also many government departments with the NSW Dept of Primary Industries having its state headquarters here outside Sydney! Nick Greiner did this when he was in power in the 1980s. They also have a TAFE, 2 hospitals (general and psychiatric) and CSU Orange Campus (Agriculture College). The local councils in this area are always trying to attract doctors away from the big cities to take up practice in a rural setting with all its pressures and side-lights. They are also trying to attract manufacturers to setup shop here to create jobs for the many people in the area. If the jobs fail, families often have to move to another town to get more work. This was the case when the drought ate into farmers' money and put them on the rocks. Orange has a stockyards and the abattoirs shut due to bad smell. Electrolux whitegoods factory is here - they make refrigerators and vacuum cleaners. They are going quite well with extra orders over Christmas 2008 requiring casual labour. ALP government intervened to prop them up and it worked. They are foreign owned, based in Sweden. Similar firms like Electrolux are closing down in Queensland but the Orange factory is going great, good news in the recession of 2009.
From July 2009, the super department Industry & Innovation (merger of Primary Industries, State and Regional Development, and Energy) is now based in Orange NSW to drive the NSW economy, an accolade that Orange is a growth area, or as Bobb Carr MP said, 'a boom town'. May NSW grow again by using Orange with its irrepressible Celtic roots to push on growth in a sadly lagging state with only 0.2% growth in 2009.
Industry & Investment is based in the old Department of Primary Industries building, Kite St, Orange (east of the railway line).
State and Regional Development are not interested in you in Orange if you are small and will not bring jobs to the region but the Parramatta office is great so go to Parramatta for support not Orange. BEC is better for small operators and is not interested in IT. The Central West Community College had the best contacts. The other groups like OCTEC and Employment National either were not interested in your area or a bit slack. There are tons of seasonal jobs for experienced apple and cherry pickers and packers around December. Apply by driving out to the farm or go through a contractor. Queensland is easier to get seasonal work. Here it can be much harder as they are quite tough on staff and wages. They prefer not to train anyone but go through a contactor which I did in January 2009 quite successfully picking cherries out near Nashdale west of Orange.
The local paper is the Central Western Daily owned by Rural Press in Bathurst. I have written many letters to the Central Western Daily which seem to be making an impact as everyone reads the local paper! Regional Business Magazine is delivered to PO Boxes monthly from Dubbo across Western NSW and Northern Victoria. Banjo Paterson the famous poet came from the Orange area near Ophir. Orange Regional Conservatorium (ORC) is based here which holds orchestral and instrumental concerts and trains students in post-secondary musical studies. ORC got a $600,000 Ministry of the Arts grant in 2004 to rebuild their performing space in Hill St. They also got $300,000 from Orange City Council for the hall refurbishment in 2008. A local Eisteddfod is held every September or so with a really good final concert with the winners performing - verse, singing, dancing, playing. The Orange Civic Centre has a very luxurious theatre as good as any in Sydney with tickets sold via Ticketek. There are numerous clubs like the Ex-Services Club and Bowls Club plus tons of local pubs. They hold Australian National Field Days here every October at Borenore where all the tractors, fence-building competitions, wireless communications displays, government aid etc are held to aid the local farming community.
There is are several private schools here. Kinross Wolaroi is a K-12 run by the Uniting Church of Australia and scooped the pool for HSC graduates with scores over 90 in 2005 (34 in Kinross Wolaroi vs 4 in Orange High School). A new Anglican school will be built in Leeds Parade, Orange on undeveloped land near CSU Orange Campus starting in 2007. They hope to grow the school one year at a time till the they have a K-12 school over 12 years. Orange Christian School on the southern edge of Orange is a K-12 growth school with children from across the area going there and where I worked as cleaner for a few months in 2009 - very friendly, polite children and staff. Rhema FM, a Christian radio station, operates right next door.
An earlier attempt to get a Central West IT Cluster has been opposed by existing groups. Western Sydney IT Cluster in Parramatta is more viable. In late 2009, I went to Canberra which is heaps more open to change than Orange. I contacted an academic at CSU in November 2009 and tried to setup an initial meeting in February 2010 but it did not get going.
Little brother of Orange about 20 mins towards Dubbo on the Mitchell Hwy. Suffered from gross floods in November 2005. Still getting over massive flood damage to tiny town.
There seems to be a sense of covering up or hiding the facts from the general public by local and state authorities in Orange - cronyism. Twice I have tried to get a letter to the editor published in the Central Western Daily, once for bad kids vandalising my old block of flats in Margaret St in 2003 and once voicing my concern at building too close to a public park (Moulder Park - National Ave dual occupancy) in 2006 and the editor has pushed me to speak to the Police who asked me to leave Orange to stop causing problems or to tone down the letter about private land / public space clash by talking to Orange City Council to find out zoning which I did and deducted nothing could be done as it was privatised. The letter about the dual occupancy was printed in 1/06 after rewriting it re zoning. We need open government in Orange. Mum is the word in Orange.
The new Netwaste bins introduced in December 2005 are the only bins to be used to put out general waste and recycled waste.
Crime Links
"the ongoing upgrade of Police's Core Operational Policing System, the establishment of a Closed Circuit TV Database and the creation of an interface with the Attorney General's Department's JusticeLink on-line judicial network" - NSW Budget 2009-10 Budget Paper 4: Infrastructure Statement p.3-39 (PDF)
Land Links:
Crime is rife in Orange and the Police are barely keeping abreast of crime. Theft seems to be the order of the day, amazing given riches of people here - average wages are $41,000/year according to ATO. Police caught a 19 year old youth who broke into a shop in Sale and Summer St and set it alight and burnt down 4 shops in early July 2006. This is the first victory against idiots burning down shops! Only proactive, prayerful citizens can fight this kind of sleeze. The Devil has a foothold in Orange so far. Orange is a very tough, cold-hearted city. I hate the place! Money is paramount. Housing Commission areas periodically get trashed when tenants leave due to lax security and fear of reprisal (bullying). Keep away from these ghettos! In Dubbo the State Government gave up and bull-dozed the areas. Police are ignoring 'non-offical complaints' and there is anger in the area so in 2009-2012 a mobile CCTV will be installed by Orange City Council to cater for understaffed police stations as they are currently ignoring blatant break-and-enters and other basic crime.
Due to over 10 French Backpackers not paying camp fees in January 2009, Orange City Council in December 2009 onwards limits the numbers and mix of races in tent sites. The only alternative is the Canobolas Caravan Park, 166 Bathurst Rd, Orange. Ring Colour City Caravan Park on 02 6362 7254 before you try to book in to save disappointment like me on 1/12/09. I returned to Canberra instead after 1 night in the Canobolas Caravan Park, Bathurst Rd, Orange.
The Colour City Caravan Park will be full re tent sites till March 2010 when the fruitpicking season ends. Fruitpickers are taking up all available sites and are mainly backpackers. The Government Law that lets backpackers stay an extra year if they work 3 months on a farm is backfiring and driving Australians out of fruitpicking. I am now doing busking and Websites instead rather than fight for a fruitpicking job against backpackers who are younger and favoured by growers. some foreign fruitpickers characterise Australians as lazy dole bludgers which was offensive to me and made me not want to work with them either.
Working holiday visas have grown from 50,000 in 1996 to 200,000 in 2009! No wonder there is so little work for Australians now in fruitpicking! The countries with most working holiday visas are: UK (21%), Rep of Korea (21%), Ireland (11%) and Germany (12%) (40,000 down to 20,000 in 2008-09). Every year the number has grown by 6,000 down to 3,000! Amazing growth!
So the backpackers get all the wages from fruitpicking, the prize tent sites and the free wifi at the Orange City Library I fought for. I changed and used the wifi in 2010.
In January 2010, I had someone ring me up re my Orange page (here) which had been linked to on Somersoft Property Investors Forum as a source of information re investing in Orange. It was only intended as some general observations from my living in Orange since 2002. How the Web twists what one does! They even met me in Canberra to say hello!