MINING TOWN'S BOOM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17895, 24 September 1921, Page 11

MINING TOWN'S BOOM.

DOWNFALL OF COBAR.

PLANT TO BE DISMANTLED. frHOM OT7B OWN COERESPOKDENT.] SYDNEY, Sept. 7. For 30 years, more or less, the name of Cobar (N.S.W.) has been synonymous with feverish industry and money-making. From that great western centre there has flowed a stream of copper which has found its way to all the corners of the globe, and kept in affluence many who never trod the soil of Australia. To-day H languishes in the last throes of doom. Its one-time population of over ten thousand has shrunk to within a thousand, arid the final death knell has been bounded during the past week by the announcement that a Newcastle firm has purchased the valuable plant of the tiieul Cobar Company, erected at a cost of over a million of money, and immediately it is to be dismantled and carted a-.iar, Such arc the bitter fruits of a <-<jllapsed market. There • have been days, and many of them, when money at Cobar has flowed like water, and miners lit their pipes with t.-.nk notes. To-day the very dwellings ■to being torn to pieces arid re-erected ■r< more promising centres. One can buy iheiii for a song. The kangaroo, the maliee liph. the rabbit., and their wild friends bid fair once more to claim their ov. a. Bui e\en yet the hills of Cobar hold * iihiia their bosoms untold wealth. Some d»v it will be wanted, and Cobar will again, phoenix like, arise proudly, slid her i old lurnaces once again will U;Uh forth clouds of reeking smoke. Hut when' That is a gamble. But it iv a gamble, and the Australian i.-; constitutionally a gambler, su there are men who are determined to hang on on the off-chance that during their lifetime the 'i untrvside will again be rummaged and burrowed and sifted for its treasures, and European money will nn'e again flow there to multiply. And meanwhile, they watch the grazing sheep stalk through the silent streets," and their hearts are heavy.