We made the turn east and have started heading back towards the coast today, arriving in Cobar. These are the lands of the Ngiyampaa people, and we’d like to pay our respects to their elders past and present.
We headed off from Broken Hill early this morning, keen to make the trip across to Cobar by early afternoon. We were all packed up and out of our little cottage in Chloride St by 7:15am, and after a quick coffee stop, on the Barrier Hwy heading directly east. It was about two hours until we had our first break at Wilcannia. It was a brief stop for the kids to burn some energy on the play equipment and to have some morning tea. Like a lot of places on this trip, I think I wanted to explore Wilcannia more, but trying to get to a bunch of other places made that tricky. Also like a lot of other places in Australia, it’s a complex town that obviously has some great things to see and learn about – but on the surface, it just felt isolated, quiet and closed.
Another two hours down the road was the turn off to Mt Grenfell (about 40km before Cobar). We had made really good time so far, and so we decided to head the 20 minutes off the highway to the Mt Grenfell Historic Site. This is a beautiful spot in some rocky scrubland, where Ngiyampaa people would gather, and rock shelters in a few locations have a huge amount of art that would’ve been used for stories and teaching. It’s been well preserved, and it was wonderful to spend time there this afternoon thinking about the families that were gathered here for thousands and thousands of years before us. I’m really grateful the Ngiyampaa people have worked with NPWS to allow us to see and share in these gathering places.
We headed back toward the highway and into Cobar – it was about 2pm, so we decided to drop into our motel to check in and start to unpack a few things briefly. We then headed to the other end of Cobar where the Information Centre is. It was here we had to pick up the key we’d booked for the Cobar Sound Chapel – an incredible sound installation inside an old water tank! It’s free to go to, but you just have to prebook and leave a deposit for the key. But there’s only one key, so you always have the space to yourself when you go. It’s a beautifully designed concrete cube inside the water tank, with amazing acoustics. Inside, a constant soundtrack is playing – a collection of contemporary sound art that runs for 43 hours (so each time you visit, you’re always likely to hear something different). The music composition was “inspired by the endless open spaces of the Outback” – and it was great to know that as you sit there and listen intently.
The kids were reasonably good – they took a while to settle in when we arrived (and we heard “is this it?!” from at least two of them!), but they did well to embrace just being quiet in the space and listening to the music, and enjoying the peace.
With a bit of time still left in the afternoon, we headed back to the information centre (where we needed to drop the key back anyway) and used the rest of the time to explore their museum in the same building – the Great Cobar Museum – called that because it’s in the original office building for the Great Cobar Copper Mine from the late 1800s. The museum details all the history of the mine, copper mining in general, and the history of Cobar itself. It was a really interesting walkthrough that also had a few great things to keep the kids interested as well. As we paid for entry to the museum, we drew a “job” from the era out of a tin – and this was our job for the time we were in the museum. At the end of the exhibits was a set of pay envelopes, and you had to find yours and open it to see how much you would’ve been paid, what that would’ve bought you in Cobar, and a rough equivalence to today. It was a great part of the experience and really engaged the kids well.
Finally this afternoon, it was a chance to add to our Big Things collection again: the Big Beer Can!
Across the road from where we’re staying tonight is the Cobar Bowling & Golf Club, and the receptionist at the motel recommended it. We’ve just come back from a really delicious Chinese dinner – felt like a classic regional town bowling club bistro! (Although, spot the odd meal out below… one member of the family wasn’t quite into the Chinese food idea.)
