Kandos is a small town in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia, within the Mid-Western Regional Council. The area is the traditional home of the Dabee tribe of the Wiradjuri people. The town sits beneath Cumber Melon Mountain (from the Aboriginal name Combamolang), in a district formerly known as Coomber. Kandos shares its locality, employment and infrastructure with the neighbouring town Rylstone, 6 kilometres away. At the 2021 census, Kandos had a population of 1263.
History
Company town
The NSW Cement Lime and Coal Company was registered in May 1913, and floated in August that year to build a cement industry. The company purchased 100 acres from local farmer John Lloyd junior for £2000 on which to establish an industry and town. The industrial infrastructure was built during the first three years. Limestone was lifted from a nearby quarry and transported via an aerial ropeway. Coal and shale were mined nearby. Dams, a rail siding, railway station, stacks, silos and power house were built, kilns imported and machinery installed. Cement production began in August 1916. It took longer than anticipated to establish the industry because the first plant, supplied by Krupp Ltd Germany, was interned at Portuguese West Africa at the outbreak of the First World War, thus requiring General Manager Frank Oakden to sail to America and England to order another plant.
James Dawson, local surveyor and landowner, was contracted by the cement company to survey the first town subdivision and most subdivisions thereafter. At the first land sale at Kandos on 14 August 1915, 200 business and residential sites were auctioned. Local pastoralist Hunter White of Havilah paid an exceptionally high price of £2700 for land set aside for a hotel on the corner of Angus Avenue and White Crescent. The land attracted that price because the company put a caveat on all land titles, to prevent the building of another hotel. White, a large investor in the company and soon to be a company director, later onsold to Tooth & Company. Over ten years, various attempts were made to obtain another hotel licence on non-company land. Each time it was opposed in the licensing courts.
In 1926 a licence for a second hotel was finally granted to William Morgan, for the Railway Hotel. It was built on Ilford Road on a crown subdivision, which was unaffected by the cement company's caveat.
Kandos was originally named Candos, an acronym, it is believed, of company officials. In 1915 the Post Master General deemed that the name Candos was too similar to Chandos in South Australia, and the name was changed to Kandos.
The streets in the first subdivision were also named after company officials: Angus Avenue (James Angus, chairman) Buchanan Street (Edward Buchanan master builder); White Crescent (Hunter White local pastoralist); Rodgers Street (Colin Rodgers financier); Jaques Street (Charles Jaques solicitor); McDonald Street (George McDonald politician); Noyes Street (Edward Noyes engineering consultant); Davies Road (Lewis Davis shipping merchant). All were successful city capitalists.
20th-century town
Kandos is a rare 20th-century town, most NSW towns having been established in the nineteenth century. It began as a private village but was proclaimed an urban area on 11 January 1918 and came under the control of Rylstone Shire Council.
All buildings in the town of Kandos, except for the original public school behind the Police Station, were built after 1915. There are several buildings of architectural interest. Kandos Museum, formerly the Methodist Church, was designed by works manager, Floyd S Richards, in the Californian Mission Style of his hometown church in America. It is on the Australian Heritage Database. St Dominic's Convent was built in the Spanish Mission Style for the Good Samaritan nuns. Both are in contrast to the modernist functional Kandos Community Centre, while the Band Rotunda, built entirely of cement, is a temple-like structure in the classical revival style.
It is believed Kandos was the first place in Australia to have concrete electricity poles, when early in 1920 the cement works supplied electricity to light Angus Avenue, Kandos Hotel, Angus Memorial Hall, businesses in the main street, the railway station and station master's cottage.