DOOM OF A GREAT MINING TOWN

Hokitika Guardian, 15 September 1921, Page 4

DOOM OF A GREAT MINING TOWN

THE DOWNL''ALL (>K COHAIL SYDNEY. Sc|ii. 5. I**ol thirty years, more 01 less, the name of Cohar - New South Wales) has been synonymous will*, feveridi imlustry and ‘money making. From 1' at greai western centre there has flowed a stream of enpper whieli lias tound its way to all tin* corners of the globe, and kept in aillueiiee many who never trod the soil of Australia. 'l’o-day it languishes in the last throes ol doom. Its one-time population ol over ten thousand has shrunk to within a thousand. and the final death-knoll has been sounded during the past Week by the aiiuoimeenieiH that a Newcastle firm has purchased the valuable plant of the Croat Cobai Company, erected at a cost of over a million of money, and immediately it is to he dismantled and carted away. Such are the hitter fruits of a collapsed market. There have been days, and many of them, when money at Cobar has (lowed like water, and 111111 *rs ! : t their pipes wit livers. To-day the very dwellings are being torn to pieces and lv-crccted in more promising centres. One can buy them for a song. The kangaroo, the malice hen, the rabbit and limit wild friends bid fair once more to claim their own.

Hut even yet the hills of Cohar hold within their bosoms untold wealth. Stum* day it will be wanted, and Cobar will again. IMtoeiiix-like, arist* proudly, and her cold furnaces tune again will belch forth their clouds of reeking smoke, lbti when? That is a gamble. |)111 ii is tt. gamble, and tbe Australian is constitutionally a. gambler, so there are men who are determined lo bang on on tbe oif-ehanee that during their lifetime the countryside will again la* rummaged and burrowed and sifted for its treasures, and European money will once again flow there to multiply. And meanwldle, they watch the grazing sheep stalk in through the silent streets and their hearts are heavy within them