Draft:Great Cobar Copper Mine

Great Cobar Copper Mine was a copper mine at Cobar, New South Wales, Australia. It operated between 1871 and 1919, and was in its time the largest copper mine in Australia. The operations included mining and smelting operations, at Cobar, and electrolytic copper refining, at Lithgow, as well as a coal mine and coke works at Rix's Creek near Singleton.

Discovery
Three well and bore sinkers, Hartman, Campbell (a.k.a. Kempf) and Gibb, took samples, from an outcrop of what was later the Great Cobar lode. At Gilgunnia, they showed those samples to Sidwell Kruge—a woman of Cornish origin, previously residing in the South Australian copper-mining town of Burra—who identified the ores as containing copper. Sidwell's husband Henry Kruge, smelted some of the ore samples in a blacksmith's forge to prove beyond doubt that the ore contained copper.

Early mining
Great Cobar Copper Mining Company

Formation of the Great Cobar Copper Syndicate
At the end of 1875, the Cobar and South Cobar companies were amalgamated into one entity, which was registered as the Great Cobar Copper Syndicate in January 1876. Copper was being shipped from Bourke, when water levels in the Darling would allow steamboats to come up the Darling River.

Growth
The completion of a railway line to Cobar in 1892.

Great Cobar Limited
Registered in England, in 1906, to take over the assets of the Great Cobar Copper Syndicate. 150,000 new £5 shares and £750,000 in 6% debentures were authorised, new capital totalling £1,500,000, not all of these were issued at the time. The assets acquired included a coal mine and coke works at Rix's Creek (near Singleton) the Chesney Mine (south of Cobar, at Wrightville) and the Peak Gold mine (south of Wrightville)

Expansion
A spectacular explosion destroyed the explosives magazine at the Great Cobar Mine, on 25 January 1908.

Decline and closure
In March 1919, the Great Cobar mine and its smelters closed, throwing hundreds of men out of work in Cobar.

Aftermath
The closure of the Great Cobar was just the first in the Cobar region, taking with it the Chesney Mine, at Wrightville, which depended upon its smelter. In 1920, the C.S.A mine at Elouera closed unexpectedly due to an underground fire, as did the Gladstone Mine, at Wrightville, which used that mine's smelter. In July 1921, the Occidental Gold Mine at Wrightville closed, and the widespread expectations that it would reopen were dashed in July 1922. After the Mount Boppy Gold Mine, at Canbelego, finally closed, in 1922, there were no longer any large mines working in the Cobar region, and there would not be until work resumed at the Occidental Mine, subsequently the New Occidental Mine, in 1933. Many miners and their families left the district altogether.

Remnants
The administration offices of the company have become the Great Cobar Museum and Visitor Information Centre, part of the Great Cobar Heritage Centre that is located on the former mine and smelter site.