Great Cobar mine

Discovery of the lode In the winter of 1870, three well and bore sinkers, two Danes, Thomas Hartman and Charles Campbell (a.k.a. Kempf) and a Scotsman, George Samson Gibb, with two Aboriginal guides, 'Boney' and 'Frank', were heading south, following a route between waterholes that were known to the guides. Camping overnight at the Kuppar waterhole, 100 miles south of Bourke, they noticed blue and green streaks in rocks near the waterhole. According to a statement made by Thomas Hartman, in 1899, the site of the discovery was a campsite for local people, who used the blue and green minerals as a body paint. On 16 September 1870, reports of the discovery were made by the Bourke correspondent of the Dubbo Dispatch. The source was Charles Campbell, who had arrived in Bourke from the Lachlan, travelling via the site of the copper deposit, not yet known as Cobar. He brought ore samples to Bourke. One specimen of ore, "with the aid of a frying pan and the forge bellows, we roughly smelted, and procured an abundance of copper". Campbell already had men at the site "securing water". At Bourke, others became involved, notably a Bourke businessman, Joseph Becker. On 6 October 1870, 40 acres of land, which included the outcrop, was taken up in the names of Campbell, Hartman, Gibb, and Becker. After the discovery - Campbell, Hartman, and Gibb None of the discoverers of the copper lode at Cobar made large fortunes from it. George Samson Gibb retained a share in the mine, Charles Campbell seems to have sold his share early, since his name is absent from the 1872 list of shareholders. By mid 1874, he was keeping an inn, at Gongolgon, on the Bogan River; before the direct road from Bourke to Cobar was opened, it was a stopping place on a longer but better-watered route. He died at Parramatta, in June 1883. Thomas Hartman sold his share in the Cobar mine to Joseph Becker in 1872. Hartman became a hotel keeper at Girilambone. He lived there for many years, but subsequently moved to Sydney, where he died seven months later, in June 1904. Thomas Hartman, the last survivor of the trio, applied for and obtained a payment from the NSW Government in 1899 as recognition of his being the discoverer of copper ore at both Cobar and Girilambone. In his narrative of the time, the role of Campbell and Gibb in the Cobar discovery was given minimal weight. == Cobar Copper Mining Company (1871–1875) ==

The three white discoverers were some of the first owners of the mine, along with four men from Bourke, Joseph Becker, William Bradley, Russell Barton, and James Smith. They called their new venture, Cobar Copper Mining Company. Becker applied to register the new company, with 20,000 £1 shares, on 1 July 1872. Although Becker and Bradley retained the largest shareholdings in the new company, there were 69 original shareholders, mostly from the region around Bourke. Rich ore (30% copper) was taken to Louth to await transport by riverboat, to smelters in South Australia, when the of the Darling River water depth allowed it. Lower-grade ore (15% copper) was stockpiled at the mine, pending the erection of smelters. Six reverberatory furnaces were constructed, two in 1875 and another four in 1876. as well as a deposit further to the north, the CSA mine, and deposits to the south in the area that would later become Wrightville. The township of Cobar began to become a more permanent settlement. Thomas Lean made his career in mining, beginning work as a boy in copper, lead, and silver mines in Cornwall. Before coming to Cobar, he had extensive mine management experience in South Australia's copper mines and had also managed quartz reef gold mining at Steglitz in Victoria. He had travelled to Cobar, first on a river paddle steamer, Princess Royal, only as far as Menindee, due to the low water level, and then by stagecoach. and lies south-wast of Cobar—pursuing pastoral activities for around five years, then operated a butchery in Cobar before retiring from business. After retiring, he lived for around 28 years on a small pastoral holding, known as 'Hildavale', which was "five or six miles north-east of Cobar". He died there, Joseph Becker and Russell Barton Joseph Becker (1832–1878) as born at Godesberg, near Bonn, in what was then in the Rhine Province, a part of Prussia, now Germany. After a short military service, he emigrated to Australia and settled in Bourke. He became involved in supplying residents and surrounding pastoral properties, later taking part in commercial land deals. It was Becker who paid £10 to secure the forty-acre site around the mineral outcrop that became the site of Cobar Copper Mine. After emigrating to Australia, he began working on a cattle station, at the age of 11. His first involvement with copper mining was as a carrier at the copper mine in Burra. In 1868, he bought 'Mooculta', a property that he had previously managed. Barton was involved in other mines at Nymagee, Girilambone, and Broken Hill, and was a director of fourteen other mining companies in addition to Great Cobar. He became a director of Mercantile Mutual Insurance Co. Ltd, Mutual Life Insurance Co., the British and Foreign Marine Insurance Co. Ltd, and was managing director of the Pastoral Finance Association Ltd. He died in 1916, at what was then part of Five Dock, now Russell Lea, a suburb of Sydney. The suburb takes its name from Barton's grand Italianate house and its 60 acres of land, 'Russell Lea'. Russell was the maiden name of Russell Barton's mother. The names Becker, Barton, and Bradley (another director) appear as street names in modern-day Cobar. == Great Cobar Copper Mining Company (1876–1889) ==

Amalgamation At the end of 1875, the Cobar and South Cobar companies were amalgamated into one entity, which was registered as the Great Cobar Copper Mining Company in January 1876, aiming to expand the mine and lift production. The North Cobar mine lease lay to the north of the Great Cobar's lease. It always remained a separate entity from the Great Cobar. Growth In 1877, James Dunstan was appointed as the manager of the newly amalgamated Great Cobar operation. Two more reverberatory furnaces were erected in 1878. In 1879, the mine began using a narrow-gauge tramway to transport ore from the mine to the furnaces. By mid 1881, the mine had a weekly payroll of £1,700 to £1,800 per week and a workforce of around 650. There were 170 miners, 125 smelter workers, about 150 wood-carters, and around 205 others (ore-dressers, brickmakers, tank-sinkers, and other mine employees). The difficulties of Cobar's remote location and its semi-arid environment soon became apparent. The absence of rainfall also meant that residents of Cobar sometimes needed to buy their water, which came from other areas in tank loads. The plant's fourteen furnaces consumed 70,000 tons of firewood annually, of which 62,000 tons came via the tramway and the remaining 8,000 tons by bullock drays. By 1889, the steam-operated tramway extended east and south-east, providing access to large stands of trees. A metallurgical engineer, Claude Vautin, demonstrated a water-jacket furnace and a converter to the company in 1884. Sulphide ores did not need prior roasting when smelted in such a furnace. However, such furnaces needed coke. With the nearest railway at Nyngan, the road freight cost of moving coke from there to Cobar made water-jacket furnaces uneconomic. In 1885, James Dunstan was replaced as manager by R.N. Williams. Copper prices were falling, and costs needed to be reined in to keep the operation profitable. Further, years of firewood harvesting were beginning to denude the plains in a wide area surrounding Cobar. It became clear that Cobar would become non-competitive without a railway connection, which would allow coke to be brought in economically. but the railway was still some years away. Another railway act was passed in 1890, actually authorising work on the railway to commence. The temporary increase in copper prices in 1888—Pierre-Eugène Secrétan, manager of Société des Métaux attempted to manipulate the international copper market in that year—was not sufficient to keep the mine working. The copper price collapsed in 1889. The mine was idle from August 1889. == Great Cobar Mining Syndicate (1894–1906) ==

The syndicate The next phase of the mine's development and operation is associated with two brothers, William Longworth (1846–1928) and Thomas Longworth (1857–1927), and their syndicate partners, in particular Dr Richard Read (c.1848—1920). After the death of their father in a mining accident in 1884, the two Longworth brothers became joint owners of a small coal mine at Rix's Creek, near Singleton, in the Upper Hunter Valley. Their neighbour was Dr Richard Read, a Singleton medical practitioner, who also owned another small coal mine. Originally fierce competitors, they joined forces after Read won a contract but could not mine enough coal to meet the contract's requirements. By taking an additional partner, Albert Gould, they expanded their coal mines and built coke ovens under the business name Singleton Coal and Coke Company. Around 1890, the partners became interested in the then idle Great Cobar mine, initially as an outlet for their coke, retaining as their advisor the mine's ex-manager, James Dunstan. made it feasible to bring coke from Rix's Creek to Cobar. Coke would allow the use of water jacket furnaces, a type of blast furnace used for non-ferrous metal smelting, in place of the less efficient, wood-fuelled reverberatory furnaces that had been used up to that time. The change would reduce costs and be critical to unlocking the mine's potential, even at lower prevailing copper prices. The partners began negotiations to operate the mine on tribute and, with Albert Dangar, and W. W. Robinson, the Longworths' brother in law, formed the Great Cobar Copper Mining Syndicate in 1894. The syndicate was sometimes referred to as 'the Longworth syndicate', 'the Read-Longworth syndicate', or incorrectly as the 'Reid-Longworth syndicate'. Tribute agreement In January 1894, the Great Cobar Copper Mining Syndicate took over the management and operation of the Great Cobar Mine, under a tribute agreement. The Great Cobar Copper Mining Company still owned the mining leases, and would do so until December 1900. The royalty paid by the Syndicate was on a sliding scale; 5%, while the price of copper in London of £45 or less per ton, and 7.5% for prices more than £45 but less than £50. For prices above £50, in addition to 7.5%, the company received 8 shillings for each pound increment above £50. In addition to the royalty, there was a minimum annual rental of £500 and a minimum output of 50 tons of ore per day. In time, the shareholders of the Great Cobar Copper Mining Company were also to benefit greatly from the decision of the Syndicate not to include, in the tribute agreement, an option to purchase the mine for £40,000. That option had been offered by the company and, in hindsight, forgoing it was a costly missed opportunity for the syndicate. However, at the time of the agreement, it seems the Syndicate did not envisage purchasing the assets. Great Cobar Copper Mining Syndicate took advantage of another circumstance; the copper from Cobar contained around two ounces of gold per ton of copper. Initially, a portion of the copper matte was refined in the old reverberatory furnaces at Cobar, with the remainder being sent to be refined in Newcastle. The syndicate seems to have considered adding converters at Cobar, which would have converted the matte to blister copper; due to the prevailing low price of copper, that path was not taken. Instead, by the end of 1896, construction was well advanced on a copper refining plant at Lithgow. By early 1897, the Lithgow plant had seven reverberatory furnaces and one furnace described as a 'refining furnace'. The Great Cobar ore and copper matte included significant amounts of gold and silver. The Syndicate announced that they would build an electrolytic copper refinery at Lithgow in late 1899. The new electrolytic refinery, which seems to have opened in 1900, allowed the precious metal content to be recovered, while simultaneously upgrading the crude copper produced at the Cobar smelters. William Longworth took charge of this part of the venture, along with the Great Cobar colliery, which was established to supply the refinery with coal for the electricity it needed. Great Cobar became a significant producer of gold and silver. The Lithgow plant also processed copper matte from Nymagee, another mine owned by syndicate members. File:General view Great Cobar Copper Mine. Forms panorama with BCP 05644 - Cobar, NSW, c.1895 (Photo, George Grill, Collection of Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW).jpg|Panoramic view - Left (1895) File:General view of Great Cobar Copper Mine - Cobar, NSW, c,1895 ( BCP 05644, forms panorama with BCP 05643)(Photo, George Grill, Collection of Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW).jpg|Panoramic view - Right (1895) File:CARNE(1899) p161 GREAT COBAR COPPER MINE.jpg|Miners working a 70-foot-wide lode, c.1899. File:CARNE(1899) p157 GREAT COBAR COPPER MINE.jpg|Stope, with compressed air drills in use (1899) File:The Brace, Great Cobar Copper Mine, Cobar, N.S.W. - early 1900s.jpg|The Brace of Syndicate-era headframe (early 1900s) File:CARNE(1899) p165 GREAT COBAR COPPER MINE.jpg|Smelter workers at 80 ton water jacket furnace, c.1899. Electrolytic refining at Lithgow Lithgow became a copper refining centre, driven largely by the presence of cheap fine coal, which could be used in reverberatory furnaces and later to generate the electricity needed for electrolytic refining. The first Lithgow copper venture was a smelter and refinery there, owned by Lewis Lloyd. The copper matte (later also blister copper) from Cobar was first melted and further refined in the anode refinery furnace, to around 99.4% copper. The molten copper was then ladled into anode moulds. The cast-copper anodes were then taken to the electrolytic section of the refinery, which consisted of 140 insulated tanks, each with an anode and a cathode. Direct current was applied between the anode and cathode. The copper in the anode was redeposited onto the thin copper cathode, while the other metals and compounds (mainly gold, silver, arsenic, bismuth, and antimony) settled, with some copper, as a greenish-black sludge at the bottom of the tank. The copper cathodes were then melted and cast into ingots of refined copper. The valuable sludge from the tanks was boiled in sulphuric acid to remove residual copper. What remained in solid form was then melted in a cupel furnace, after adding some silica sand and sodium carbonate, and cast into small ingots. Those ingots, known Dore bullion, consisted of a mixture of gold and silver, which were later separated into pure gold and silver, by electrolysis. With copper prices around £70 per ton, the syndicate bought the mine outright, taking ownership on 12 December 1900, ending the tribute agreement and thereby eliminating the royalty payments. The purchase price was around £315,000, but it seems that the payment was spread over several years. Although much more costly than the forgone purchase option of 1894, at prevailing copper prices, it seemed a reasonable price. The outcome was good for the vendor. In 1903, the Great Cobar Mining Company declared a dividend of £4 per share, totalling £320,000. Cobar was a distant victim of a copper market manipulation. Amalgamated Copper Company began selling copper below market price in October 1901 to force down the copper price and drive smaller producers out of the market. , on Macquarie River, during the worst seven months of 1902, and also to reduce rail freight rates. An option to buy The difficult situation from October 1901 to November 1902 likely gave the Syndicate the impetus to sell its copper business if a good price could be obtained for the assets. Various transactions were initiated, but none were completed. In a move that was to have further consequences, in May 1902—by then, the copper price had recovered—an option to purchase the Great Cobar assets was granted to a syndicate of London investors, headed by A.S Joseph. As a consequence of negotiating the option, the assets were valued at £1,006,000, a copper-mining village that is now a ghost town, four miles south-west of Clermont, Queensland. His father, William Blakemore, Blakemore's career began in Broken Hill, as a metallurgical assayer, in 1888. He was made bankrupt in 1891, while working as a metallurgist of the British Broken Hill mine. He was later an assistant manager at the Broken Hill Proprietary mine and eventually was in charge of its eighteen smelting furnaces. In 1895, he married Dura Maude, the younger of the two daughters of John Howell, a Canadian-born naturalized-American mining engineer and mining industry figure. Howell came to Broken Hill in 1889 to serve as the general manager of the British Broken Hill mine. From 1890 to 1895, Howell had been general manager of the Broken Hill Proprietary and Block 10 mines. After he left Broken Hill, Howell established and managed the Conrad mine, was named Howell, after him. until June 1898. He later was manager of the Prince of Wales gold mine near Gundagai, N.S.W., and he was also general manager of that mine's owner, Howell's Consolidated Goldmines. He returned to New South Wales when his father-in-law became ill to stand in as manager of the Conrad mine. at what would become Elouera. Exploration work at the C.S.A. Mine soon revealed a sizable lead-zinc deposit, and a new company, C.S.A. Mines Limited, was floated. When the Great Cobar Mine was sold to new owners in 1906, Blakemore remained its General Manager. Blakemore was dismissed from his position at Great Cobar in 1909. During 1911, he visited Mexico and wrote newspaper articles about his trip, including events in the city of Juárez soon after its capture by rebels, during the Mexican Revolution. He remained in the Cobar region and became a vocal critic of Great Cobar's operations and management. It joined with the neighbouring Tinto Mine, in 1912, emerging for the first time as a major mine in the Cobar region. Also in 1912, Blakemore became a director of a new company to work the Iodide Mine, at Mineral Hill. Probably his last involvement with mining in the Cobar region was as a member of the board of New Occidental Gold Mining Company Limited, operators of the New Occidental Mine at Wrightville. He joined the board in 1936. He died at Burwood, in 1941. Stichts' achievement—after about six years of incremental progress—may not have been truly a world first or even the first in Australia, but it was very influential, especially for mines with similar chalcopyrite ore, allowing ore from the Chesney Mine to be carried to the Great Cobar smelters more readily. This was an important development because the 'siliceous' ore, copper ore from the Chesney mine, could be used as a flux when smelting the 'basic' ores, Great Cobar, improving the economics of the smelting operation by reducing the amount of limestone needed. In 1904, the syndicate bought the Chesney Mine—initially a gold mine but, as the depth increased, increasingly a copper mine— and they had owned the Nymagee Copper Mine, since 1896, File:Great Cobar - Water jacket furnaces and blower engines, 1905 (Sydney Mail, 9 Aug 1905, p352).jpg|Left side of panoramic view of Great Cobar (1905). File:Great Cobar - View of plant to right of water-jacket furnaces and blowers, 1905 (Sydney Mail, 9 Aug 1905, p352).jpg|Right side of panoramic view of Great Cobar (1905) File:Great Cobar - Tramway from crusher bins to furnace bins, 1905 (Sydney Mail, 9 Aug 1905, p352).jpg|Tramway from crusher bins to furnace ore bins (1905) File:Great Cobar Mine - Tramway over ore bins at furnaces c.1905 (Sydney Mail, 9 Aug 1905, p351 ).jpg|Narrow-gauge tramway over ore bins at furnaces (1905) File:Great Cobar Mine - Pouring slag at water jacket furnaces (Sydney Mail, 9 Aug 1905, p351).jpg|Pouring slag at water jacket furnace (1905). Copper matte is being tapped into the smaller vessel on the left (lower spout). File:Great Cobar - Copper matte awaiting shipping to Lithgow, 1905 (Sydney Mail, 9 Aug 1905, p352).jpg|Copper matte awaiting shipment to Lithgow (1905) Sale and aftermath William Longworth retired as the managing director of the Syndicate in early 1905, On 14 August 1906, the promoters of Great Cobar Ltd gave Dr Richard Read, Chairman of the Syndicate, a cheque for £775,000 as final payment, which, together with an earlier deposit of £25,000, amounted to the £800,000 purchase price. The principals of the Syndicate then set up Australian Woollen Mills in 1908 and made a second fortune, especially by making khaki uniforms for the Australian Army during World War I. Thomas Longworth was the chairman, and William Longworth was a director. All the principals became very wealthy by the standards of their day. At their deaths, the estates of both Longworth brothers and of Albert Dangar each were in excess of £300,000, and that of Dr Richard Read over £136,000. Thomas Longworth bought Woollahra House, a very large estate on land now comprising some of the most desirable harbourside real estate in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. He lived there until he died in 1927, after which the house was demolished, and the land was subdivided. One of his sons was William (Bill) Longworth (1892–1969), later a prominent businessman, but was, as a young man, a competitive swimmer who completed at the 1912 Olympic Games (qualifying for but missing the 100m final and 1500m semi-finals due to illness). He was an early exponent of the freestyle swimming technique known as the 'Australian crawl'. Both brothers owned steam yachts. Thomas's was Cobar, == Great Cobar Limited (1906–1914) ==

New owners In the two decades before the outbreak of the First World War, British investors were seeking opportunities outside the United Kingdom. The purchase of the Great Cobar was one of several large investments in Australia that involved acquiring existing assets to improve or expand them. Such investments, in New South Wales, included British Australian Oil Company, Commonwealth Oil Corporation, Dapto Smelting Works, Mount Boppy Gold Mine, and the Prince of Wales Mine. A few, such as the Sons of Gwalia mine in Western Australia, were long-lived, fabulous earners, and others like the Mount Boppy were highly remunerative. However, some eventually were financially unsuccessful, some were also heavily over-capitalised, and some were ill-conceived from the outset; all three would be the case for the new company, Great Cobar Limited. 150,000 new £5 shares and £750,000 in 6% debentures were authorised, being new share capital and debenture debt in a capital structure totalling £1,500,000; not all of this amount was issued at the time. The assets acquired included the refinery at Lithgow, the coal mine and coke works at Rix's Creek (near Singleton), the Chesney Mine (south of Cobar, at Wrightville), the Peak Gold mine (south of Wrightville), and the Conqueror Gold Mine (a small mine, due east of the Peak and south-east from Cobar), but not the Nymagee Copper Mine, which later would be bought by different English investors. Preparing to float the new company, Great Cobar Limited, its promoters issued a prospectus document forecasting profitable operations. The no-risk profit made by the new company's promoters, at the time of the float, was also of concern. That the mine had already been producing for some thirty years, by 1906, should have raised some concerns about its remaining economic life; that was especially so, if production was dramatically increased. A report accompanying the prospectus noted ore reserves of 1,530,506 tons, which would yield a profit of £1,215,002 (at a copper price of £60/ton). He was the son of renowned sculptor, Thomas Woolner, Woolner and Company had "incurred heavy losses through the default of clients, falling markets and the stagnation of business due to the South African war". By the end of 1904, the firm was insolvent but continued to trade illegally. By promoting a company, called Bohemian Mining Corporation Limited, Woolner and Company returned to solvency. A director of Bohemian Mining Corporation—ultimately an unsuccessful investment for its shareholders—was Andrew Haes, later the Chairman of Great Cobar. and Andrew Haes. Haes, later the chairman of Great Cobar Limited, had advanced the costs for arranging the float to the apparently cash strapped Woolner. Andrew Haes, it was later revealed, had been a director of some failed or unprofitable listed companies. Woolner and his partner Sumner-Jones were declared in default and ‘hammered’, meaning they could no longer trade on the London Stock Exchange. Bankrupt and publicly humiliated, Woolner attempted to re-establish his career in America, spending some of his time there. His personal bankruptcy was discharged in 1910. Later, Woolner was accused of exerting undue influence on the 1912 and 1913 wills of Elizabeth Josephine Forster. She was a wealthy nonagenarian and patron of artists, whose property was worth more than £500,000. Forster's relatives took the matter to the Admiralty, Divorce and Probate Division of the High Court in London. They alleged that the will was not duly executed, that Elizabeth Foster was not of sound mind, and that she had not understood the will. They argued that her property had to be protected by the Commissioners in Lunacy. The case was settled in March 1917. One report, in 1884, referred to him as "probably the greatest authority upon haematite iron-ore mining and geological conditions of haematite". He resigned, as manager of Postlethwaite's Moor Row Mine, and set up a consulting practice in London, in 1896. His first involvement with Great Cobar was in 1903, when he provided a report on its operations for its then owners, the Great Cobar Mining Syndicate. The other principal of Kendall and Barnett, W. J. Barnett, was a director of Great Cobar Limited, right to its end. North Cobar mine On a somewhat similar trajectory to becoming controlled by English capital was an adjacent mine site, to Great Cobar's immediate north, the North Cobar mine. First operated by the North Cobar Copper Mining Company Limited—a company founded in 1873, and associated with Joseph Becker and Russell Barton— that company had prospected on its land, without any real success. The mining rights and machinery were sold for £12,500, in mid 1905, and the old company was put into voluntary liquidation, in January 1906. The Great Cobar Syndicate, owners of the Great Cobar mine, had not moved to take over its neighbour, and a local report described the North Cobar's prospects as poor. A new English company, Great Cobar North Copper-mining Company, Limited was floated in mid 1906. The new company provided capital funding, and a mine development program began. In 1911, it was still engaged in prospecting the North Cobar lease. Its main shaft was, by then, 1,500 feet deep. However, the expected continuation of the Great Cobar ore body was believed to lie further down, at 1,700 to 2,000 feet. In 1913, the company sought to raise more capital, and was working to sink the shaft to 1,700 feet. It seems that the North Cobar mine did not produce a significant amount of ore, but from 1913, it was used to ventilate workings of Great Cobar mine. The mine was still being worked in mid 1916, and there were reportedly plans for a concentrator plant, and to send its concentrate to Port Kembla. At the beginning of 1922, the company was "cleaning up its assets", reportedly having spent "hundreds of thousands of pounds", but with little to show for it but the deepest shaft on the Cobar field, at over 2,000 feet. the Electrolytic Smelting and Refining operation at Port Kembla, the short-lived Dapto Smelting Works, and the Cockle Creek Smelter. At least one observer later saw the decision to smelt at the Great Cobar mine site as a fatal mistake. Great Cobar Limited also inherited the electrolytic refinery at Lithgow, which refined copper matte and, later, blister copper from the Cobar smelter until 1911. Expansion and mechanisation Having to pay interest on the debentures, at the very least, the new company needed to both increase production and control costs; the path to profitability lay in a large expansion of capacity and intensive mechanisation. The mine and smelter capacity would need to be doubled. Kendall was already familiar with the Great Cobar, having provided a report on its operations, for its former owners, in 1903, and his firm provided a favourable report for the prospectus when Great Cobar Limited was floated. Kendall and Bellinger made a tour of the operations in March 1909. Blakemore contended that Kendall's design had been faulty, apparently overlooking his own role from 1906 to 1908 and his far more extensive experience in smelting. He remained in the district as a consultant to other ventures. Blakemore would later work for the rival C.S.A. mine, something that would have consequences for the Great Cobar, a decade into the future. Removing Blakemore did not end the problems. Around midnight on 11 June 1909, Cobar residents were awakened by a series of explosions that caused extensive damage to the No. 2 furnace. Fortunately, the No. 1 furnace was ready to reenter service by then. This was not the first such explosion; an earlier one had been reported in March 1909. It was noted that while Bellinger had reportedly stated that the new plant was "modern and quite satisfactory", he was already making modifications to the plant. The managing director, John Kendall, like Blakemore, ultimately seems to have been held responsible for the poor performance of the new plant and ceased to be connected with Great Cobar after June 1909. The new managing director was George Earle Baker, who had been one of the promoters of the float of Great Cobar Limited in 1906. Herman Bellinger Herman Carl Bellinger (1867–1941) was born in Germany. In 1873, he emigrated to Nevada, United States, where his father worked as a mining engineer. From the mid-1880s, Bellinger was working in the copper industry, with Fritz Augustus Heinze. From 1897, he was associated with the Trail Smelter, near the Canada–United States border in British Columbia. In 1906, he was working in Crofton on Vancouver Island, where there was a copper smelter. After the panic of 1907, copper prices fell, and the smelter, owned by the Britannia Mining & Smelting Company, closed in January 1908, likely making Bellinger available to work at the Great Cobar. Bellinger took over as General Manager in February 1909. From January 1913 to May 1913, Bellinger was on leave in England and America; during that time, he arranged a new employment agreement with the board. During his visit to England, he reported to an extraordinary meeting of the company, held on 31 March 1913, but his report did not impress observers. After his time at Cobar, beginning in 1916, he worked for the Chile Exploration Company. He had involvement in mining in Utah, Europe, and Africa. He was awarded the William Lawrence Saunders Gold Medal by the Society of Mining Engineers in 1941 for innovations in mining methods. The translucent blue-green mineral, Bellingerite, Cu3(IO3)6·2H2O, is named after him. at nearby Dapville. Like the Chesney mine, it lay adjacent to the Peak branch line, allowing its ore to be railed to the Great Cobar smelters. Processing the Chesney ore had been one of the problems facing Bellinger, and he believed that the new separation plant would resolve it. The Great Cobar's electrolytic refinery at Lithgow operated until 1911. Equipment and operations Main shaft and winder The new main shaft had a rectangular cross-section, 15 feet by 8 feet, divided into three compartments; two carried cages and the other contained pipes, cables and a ladderway. There were levels spaced every 100 feet, from which the mine was worked. In 1910, the main shaft was down to 1,033 feet. In June 1912, the mine was working down to the 13th level, and the main shaft was at 1,419 feet down. By the time the mine first closed in 1914, the main shaft was 1,500 feet deep, providing access to 14 levels. The winding engine for the main shaft was steam-powered, It was speed controlled by a high-speed governor, connected to the engine shaft by a chain-drive. There were two winder drums, four feet wide and ten inches in diameter, onto which two layers of the steel rope were wound. The drum being operated was connected to the engine shaft via a steam-operated clutch. Braking was applied by a heavy weight acting on a brake drum, released by a foot control. The brake was applied automatically if the steam supply or the winding engine driver was lost. The levers and controls were arranged so that a single winding engine driver could operate them without leaving his usual position. Crushers, crusher ore conveyor, and crusher bins Ore from the mine was crushed using two 'Heclon' gyratory crushers, made by the Hadfield Steel Company. and so able to be sent to the smelter in the appropriate proportions. File:Ore conveyor, Great Cobar Copper Mine - Cobar, NSW, 1912 (Collection of the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW).jpg|Inclined ore conveyor gantry and bedding bins (1912). Both were added as enhancements to the 1906 design in 1910–1911. File:Interior view, ore conveyor belt, Great Cobar Copper Mine - Cobar, NSW, June 1912 (Collection of Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW).jpg|Interior view of the ore conveyor above the six bedding bins. The movable chute on the conveyor is visible at the far end. (1912) Furnace ore feed From chutes below the bedding bins to the feeding floor level of the water-jacket furnaces, side-tip charging skips were hauled by rope over an inclined tramway, onto one of the two charging floors of the furnace building. The skips were then tipped manually, with the ore falling through an openable side hatch directly into the furnace. File:Tramways to furnace, Great Cobar Copper Mine, June 1912 (Collection of Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW).jpg|Rope-hauled inclined tramway to furnaces (1912). There were two such inclines, with a charging floor on both sides of the furnaces. File:Feeding floor, Great Cobar Copper Mine smelters. Side tipping trucks - Cobar, NSW, June 1912 (Collection of Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW).jpg|Charging floor at furnaces, with a side-tip charging skip being tipped (1912) File:Great Cobar Mine, feeding floor of furnaces and side-tip truck (Plate XXXI, Report on Cobar Copper and Gold Field, E.C. Andrews, 1911).jpg|Another view of a charging floor and a charging skip being tipped. Note rope haulage (c.1911). Smelting plant The steel smelter building was 250 feet long and 85 feet high. Electrically powered overhead travelling gantry cranes carried the ladles of molten copper matte to the converters, in which the matte was converted to blister copper. The converters were located along the western side of the smelter building. There were originally two convertors, Also on the western side was one much smaller water-jacket furnace, mainly used for remelting copper. By 1909, the mine tank had a capacity of at least 70-million gallons, however, in the semi-arid climate, it was rarely full. Electric pumps moved about 40,000 gallons of saline groundwater per day from the mine into saline lakes, where it was lost to evaporation. In times of drought, in desperation, this saline water was sometimes used for cooling the water jacket furnaces, despite the resulting corrosion. The boilers used chain-grate mechanical stokers, with coal fed via chutes from overhead hoppers. Electrical power Electricity was generated using three 300 kW Siemens alternators, each powered by a directly coupled Browett-Lindley vertical triple-expansion steam engine. The engine driving the converters was a cross-compound steam engine. The Roots Connorsville positive-displacement blowers for the water-jacket furnaces, Relining of convertor vessels took place in a dedicated area inside the furnace building. File:Machine shop, Great Cobar Copper mine - Cobar, NSW, 1912 (Collection of Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW).jpg|Machine shop (1912) File:Great Cobar Mine, relining converer vessels (Plate XXXV, Report on Cobar Copper and Gold Field, E.C. Andrews, 1911).jpg|Relining Converter vessels (c.1911) Operational difficulties Mining operations In 1912, net profit for the year was £168,617—buoyed by a rise in the copper price from £58 per ton in December 1911 to £79 12s in June 1912—but this profit was not high enough to allow a dividend. Conscious that even this level of profitability was precarious—dependent as it was upon the copper price—above all, the company pushed for higher rates of production, neglecting mine development for short-term high rates of ore extraction. Although the surface plant was heavily mechanised, the underground mine was not. Rock drills were powered by compressed air, and blasting was used, but otherwise, underground mining was an entirely manual process, carried out by a large and expensive workforce. Mine skips (or "trucks") with approximately one-ton capacity were first filled at the ore face before being pushed to the "plat" over rails. The skips were then manually pushed into or hauled out of cages that were raised and lowered by the main shaft winder. At the lower levels, this task was done by the "platman" and his assistants, while at the surface, the corresponding task was done by "bracemen". A cage accommodated two skips at a time, and typically between 1,150 and 1,500 skips of ore were raised per 24-hour period. To maintain that level of production, a similar number of empty skips had to be returned, during the same 24-hour period, to locations within the mine where ore was being extracted. The mine itself became a bottleneck in the vast enterprise, unable to deliver enough ore to the surface to meet the smelting furnaces' demands. In 1910–11, miners raised a total of 298,050 tons of ore, while another 6,243 tons came from the old dump at the Cobar Gold Mine; from this ore the company recovered 6,248 tons of copper, 22,048 oz of gold, and 109,421 oz of silver, with a total value of £372,046. Total production had exceeded 100,000 tons of copper, by March 1913. From 1871 up to and including 1911, the mine at Cobar—including Chesney mine from 1904 and Cobar Gold mine from 1910)—mined 2,866,643 tons of ore and from it had produced 91,384.75 tons of copper, equating an average recovery rate of 3.19%. Needless to say, this two-pass smelting approach came at a cost. Nonetheless, it became the means by which the problem was overcome, and was possibly one reason that a fourth water-jacket furnace had been added. Smelting losses A problem was that too much copper was being lost during smelting; the recovery rate was 1.94% copper per ton of ore, meaning around a quarter of the copper in the ore (assaying 2.6%) was lost during processing, mainly in the slag. The effect was exasperated by the two-pass smelting approach with copper being lost on each pass through the water-jacket furnaces. Converter slag was also recycled. was needed for backfilling, to raise the floor level of underground stopes, as miners extracted the ore, and to stabilize worked-out areas. There was a separate mullock shaft, down which mullock was dropped to the 300-foot level, from where it was distributed, as fill to raise the floor level of stopes as these were mined out. Coal ash from the steam boilers is used to supplement the mullock. File:Great Cobar Mine, new slag dump (Plate XXXVII, Report on Cobar Copper and Gold Field, E.C. Andrews, 1911).jpg|New slag dump c.1911, with electric 'motor' and slag ladle wagon. File:Great Cobar - Tipping molten slag (Australian Town and Country Journal, 19 Jul 1911, p24 ).jpg|Tipping molten slag (1911) File:Berc 20 ton slag ladle and car, Great Cobar Copper Mine - Cobar, NSW, June 1912 (Collection of Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW).jpg|Slag ladle wagon (1912). The tipping mechanism was electrically operated but could also be manually operated. Types of ore and flux consumption A pressing problem for the company was the type of ore that was being mined. Both 'basic' and 'siliceous' (or acidic) copper ore occurred at Cobar. Both types needed to be blended for smelting; otherwise, fluxes were required to effectively remove impurities, particularly iron, from the copper matte produced in the water-jacketed furnaces. As time progressed and mining went deeper, the ore from the Great Cobar became increasingly siliceous and higher in iron. The increasingly siliceous ore production at Great Cobar also meant that the ore from the Chesney Mine and Cobar Gold Mine was no longer suitable as a smelting flux; in fact, it added to the problem of too much siliceous ore. Instead, the Great Cobar smelters needed to bring in more limestone as a flux. In early 1914, the company was planning to open a quarry at Molong, capable of mining the 100 tons of limestone per day needed by its smelters. A possible solution was to stop smelting at Great Cobar. One of the smaller mines in the region, the Queen Bee Mine, at Illewong, eventually stopped its mine site smelting operations altogether, and instead produced copper concentrate, which was shipped to the large E.R.& S copper smelter and electrolytic refinery, at Port Kembla, which had opened in 1908. However, the Great Cobar company had invested in a huge smelter at its remote mine site, and writing off such a large investment was always a very unlikely outcome. A flotation plant of a size needed to treat all of Cobar's ore would be immense. Moreover, by late 1913, it was apparent that the Great Cobar's own flotation plant, with a capacity of 50,000 tons per annum, was not meeting expectations. retaining only the coal mine and coke works. From then on, Great Cobar sent the blister copper that it smelted at Cobar to America for refining. External factors Great Cobar was critically dependent on the Cobar railway line to maintain operations. Smelting had ceased for two months during late 1911 because a coal miners' strike had left the railways unable to carry coke and other materials to the Great Cobar. Remoteness from larger centres and the coast also brought difficulty in retaining a large and relatively skilled workforce. According to Blakemore, in 1907, Cobar workers were well paid, with higher pay rates than elsewhere in New South Wales. All workers were on a six-day working week of eight-hour shifts in 1907. Mining labor average wages were 11 shillings a day, but many were earning up to 22s a day, and men working in the new main shaft averaged 30s a day. Furnace labourers got from 8s to 9s a day, and ordinary labourers got 8s a day. Blakemore had wanted to cover the seventh day by a new gang of workers, but unions were able instead to obtain additional overtime shifts at a rate of time-and-a-quarter, in a ruling by the Arbitration Court, and by threatening the company with strike action. There were three major trade unions representing various workers. The Amalgamated Miners' Association represented the underground workers, the Smelters Union represented the smelter workers, and the Engine Drivers and Firemen's Association mainly represented the remaining surface workers associated with the mine winder, powerhouse, boilers, steam engines, and industrial railway. On occasion, the unions acted jointly as the Combined Unions. A constant source of dispute was wage rates. Wages for different classes of employees were determined in different ways. Some were paid a wage per shift. Others, for example, those filling mine skips (or 'trucks') were paid by the 'truck' (around one ton of ore), and smelter operators had pay rates on a sliding scale based on the copper price. By 1912, the Company employed a total of 2,200 people, with 960 working in the mine and smelter, and its wages and salary bill was £23,000 per fortnight. During his time as manager, Bellinger attempted to resolve some of the long-standing issues with the workers and was seen as conciliatory and open to negotiation. Another source of dissent between the company and its unionised workforce was the ever-present risk of work-related death or injury, and the union's practice of stopping all underground work for three shifts when a miner died from a work-related event. Additionally, the surface works and smelters at the Great Cobar mine had many hazards, ranging from working at height to molten metal and slag. Serious accidents were commonly fatal. In January 1908, while sinking the new main shaft, John Pascoe was struck in the head by a full bucket that had fallen from a height of around 125 feet, dying soon afterwards. In June 1908, James Cassidy, a 'platman' (a person who puts skips into and out of the winder cage, at an underground level), was killed by an unknown object that fell down the shaft. William Jackson was killed in a rockfall in November 1908. In late October 1909, a labourer, Ambrose Fox, died of burns to his head and body caused by an explosion of hot metal at a water-jacket furnace. 1910 was a particularly bad year; six died. In January 1910, James Craddock died from internal injuries after falling from an 18-foot-high scaffold. In May 1910, William Evans died from internal injuries he received while pulling down a structure. In September 1910, Edward Atkins died after falling, unseen by other miners, into an ore pass (a vertical or near-vertical opening made to provide more convenient material handling by gravity and to reduce haulage distances). In October 1910, two men died; a surface worker, Gerdhardt Weichmann, was killed, apparently, in an unexplained fall from a platform, and a miner, Walter Bender, died from injuries after a rockfall. In November 1910, Thomas Wells, stepped out of the wrong side of a cage, at the 9th level, into an open shaft compartment, falling to his death; the cage was required to have a bar preventing access to the other compartment of the shaft, but it was not in place. It had been the practice of the underground miners to stop work for three shifts following a fatality. The sad events of 1910 caused significant disruption to smelter operations. In November 1910, Henry Bellinger, on behalf of the company, offered the workers an incentive to continue working in the future, except for two hours to attend the funeral. In return, if a levy of half a crown (or 2 shillings and 6 pence) were contributed to the widow from each miner's wage, the company would also contribute pound-for-pound. It was expected that an amount of around £275 could be given for the welfare of the widow and family of the dead miner. The union countered by offering to donate half a shift's pay if the company contributed pound-for-pound. It was to take until March 1913 for the company and the Combined Unions to agree. All mine workers contributed 2 shillings, and the company contributed 1 shilling, to a jointly administered Miners' Accident Relief Fund; mining work was to continue, but workers had 2 hours off, at their own expense, to attend the funeral. 1911 was another bad year, with five fatalities. In February 1911, Charles Stokes died in a hospital after he was severely burned in an explosion of hot slag. Also in February 1911, John Jolly died of peritonitis after being crushed against a wall by a crane. Frank Welsh died in April 1911, succumbing to the injuries he received when a rock knocked him into an ore pass, and he was buried, except for his head and hands. In August 1911, a miner, Oliver Rafferty, was working on a boring machine, when he overbalanced and fell backwards onto a pile of rocks, hitting his head, and then rolling 25 feet down an ore pass; he died on the way to the hospital. In December 1911, Thomas Attwater, a shunter, fell between the electric locomotive that he was climbing into and a slag pot, after a handrail broke, and then was run over; he died at the hospital. In December 1912, Henry Love died after a blast in an ore pass in which he was working. 1913 was yet another bad year, with six workers' deaths resulting from work accidents. In April 1913, Walter McEvoy died after seven hours in hospital, after a blasting accident had ripped open his abdomen. In June 1913, a Romanian miner, Giames Piter, was killed in a fall of earth. In July 1913, a pump driver, Arthur Sara, attempting to cross a railway line, caught his foot and was run over and killed by an electric locomotive. In August 1915, Stanley Hutchings was caught between two trucks, was badly injured, and died two days later. In November 1913, Simon Burrs was boodling (moving material by shovel) when the heap, upon which he was standing, collapsed; he fell headfirst, and was completely buried, dying of asphyxia while he was being freed. In December 1913, Walter Wardle, a shift boss at the furnaces, fell backwards off a ladder and died. Also in December 1913, a labourer named Edwards, was badly injured when a bale arm—a type of spreader bar used when cranes lifted pots (or ladles) of hot metal—fell on him while he was working near the convertors, and died while in shock caused by his injuries. In January 1914, an assistant manager, Albert Luff, was killed by a rockfall while he was inspecting a stope. Accidents, if not fatal, could result in a life-changing disability. Maurice O'Donnell lost his right hand and a part of his arm when a blasting charge detonated prematurely in February 1911. In November 1911, Thomas Jobson, an engine driver in the surface workings, caught his left hand in a conveyor belt, and his arm needed to be amputated at the elbow. A Russian employee, John Atnor, was trying to remove a broken wooden handle from a hammer head in November 1913, using dynamite. His shattered forearm was amputated below the elbow. There were also some remarkable survivals and near misses. While the new plant was under construction, on 25 January 1908, a spectacular explosion destroyed the mine's 30-year-old explosives magazine, which stood well away from the mine itself. The total weight of blasting explosives held in the magazine at the time was 2,285 lbs, slightly over a ton. It was first noticed that the magazine was on fire, then a small explosion occurred, lifting off the roof, followed 15 minutes later by an enormous explosion. Fortunately, there had been time for police to warn most residents of the adjacent villages of Dapville and Wrightville of the impending danger, and to prevent anyone using the road between Cobar and Wrightville. There were no serious injuries and, aside from the magazine's destruction, very little property damage. In January 1910, a shift boss at the Great Cobar concentrators named Delaney had left his work to rescue a goat from a dog when he fell into an unprotected mine shaft. He fell around 110 feet, but when rescued, was found to be not seriously injured by the fall. Later that year, in March, a cage, fully laden with ore, fell down the shaft after a link broke, but there were no injuries. Elusive profits and financial difficulties The prospectus issued at the time of the float, in May 1906, had stated that the then existing plant—producing 4,000 tons of copper annually—was capable of earning a 15% dividend on the newly issued Great Cobar share capital. Reportedly, within three months of paying the dividend, the company's balance sheet was in the red, by £24,000. It would be the company's first and last dividend to its shareholders. By August 1909, a newspaper report subtitled "Parlous Position of Mine and Finances" reported that, after paying the debenture holders, the company had incurred a net loss of £500. It pointed out that this was in fact an artificially low amount, because in company's accounts, "No provision has been made out of profits, for depreciation, preliminary expenses, underwriting commission, and discount on debentures", and by making a loss there was no contribution to a sinking fund—intended to be £100,000 per annum drawn from profits—for the eventual redemption of the crippling debentures. Around March 1909, settlement was granted on the last £200,000 of its authorised debentures, and the proceeds were used to pay down the company's bank overdraft. Of course, that further increased the debenture interest payments. The company had expended as much as £500,000 on the new plant at Cobar by mid 1912, well in excess of the original budget of £160,000. From these costs alone, it was apparent that the original budget was woefully inadequate; barely £62,000 was left for transport to the site, foundations, equipment installation, local equipment purchases, buildings, chimneys, and sinking the new shaft. There were additional costs for items not in the original scope, introduced by Bellinger's plant modifications of 1909–1911; expansion of smelter capacity by one third (fourth furnace and converter) and the corresponding proportionate increases in scope for the overhead cranes, powerhouse, water system, and industrial railway; Wages and salaries for the large workforce were an unavoidable cost; in 1912, they amounted to £23,000 per fortnight, or nearly £600,000 per annum. A decrease in the price of copper to a range of £65 to £70 during 1913 led to further financial difficulties and a drop in share price to 17s 6d, in mid-December 1913, Upon his return to London, Pellew-Harvey gave a report highly critical of Bellinger's management of Great Cobar. The company held its annual general meeting in London on 17 December 1913. The meeting decided to place the management of the Great Cobar operations in the hands of Bewick, Moreing, and Co., a firm of consulting mining engineers and mine managers. It recognised that there had been a woefully inadequate allowance for depreciation—insufficient even to cover the write-off of the old Syndicate plant— but did not call a halt to the loss-making operations, which were burdened by the crippling interest payments to debenture holders. On 30 December 1913, an informal meeting of shareholders, highly critical of the board's actions, was held. A report of the meeting stated, "In regard to finance, the directors had not shown themselves any more expert than they had in dealing with the machinery. The initial mistake was over capitalisation The purchase consideration amounted to over £1,000,000 talking in round figures and the preliminary expenses to £160,000 leaving only about £114,746 working capital which was far too small and the company had been suffering in consequence, Why was so high a price paid for this property? The prospectus showed that the vendor bought it for £800,000 and sold it to the company for £1,006,000 and for finding subscriptions for shares and debentures to a total of £1,000 000 he received a commission of £140,000 of which £50,000 was paid in cash. Thus £350,000 of water was introduced into the capital. For this there were no assets on the other side of the accounts." Two of the dissident shareholders stood for election to the board of directors, but were defeated by incumbent directors in a ballot. Supplying low-grade 'basic' ore from C.S.A. to the Great Cobar was one justification for a new branch railway to the C.S.A. mine, In the end, the precise reasons did not matter; the financial bottom line did. An ominous sign was the price of the debentures: by the end of 1913, only £55 for a £100 debenture face value, Work continued on essential tasks, such as filling mined-out stopes with mullock, to stabilize them. The receiver in London authorised this work to begin, during May 1914, and an electrically powered conveyor was installed to move the mullock to the mullocking shaft. During this work, there was another fatality. In June 1914, Arthur Henwood's lifeless body emerged from a mullock pass, but how it came to be there was not known. An inquest determined that he died from suffocation. At the beginning of August 1914, the filling work had largely been completed when a cable arrived from London, resulting in 160 of the remaining workers being laid off. Initially, around 60 men were kept on to complete the remaining work. The events in Europe leading to the outbreak of the First World War, paradoxically, had caused a fall in the price of copper. The pumps were kept running until 6 September 1915, when pumping stopped for the first time in 24 years. The engine drivers agreed to work for nothing for another fortnight, to prevent the mine from filling. During that time, it was hoped that the NSW Government would provide a loan to assist the receiver in reopening the mine. The Premier, William Holman, announced, in early November 1915, that the government would provide the loan, clearing the last obstacle for a recommencement of operations. == Operations during receivership (1915–1919) ==

Reopening Following the outbreak of the First World War, vast quantities of copper were needed for brass casings of bullets and shell cartridges. The price of copper rose in response to the demand; the British Government sought to control supplies of the metal in its colonies and the Dominions. Reopening Great Cobar would not only have the potential for profitable operation by the receiver, but also had a patriotic dimension, supporting the war effort. Mr. W. Pellew-Harvey—in the role of a consultant this time—visited the mine and identified that £102,000 was needed to restart operations. A meeting of the debenture holders in May 1915 carried a resolution authorising the receiver to take the necessary steps to reopen the Great Cobar operations. The receiver attempted to raise the full amount, at 6% interest, from the debenture holders, but only £62,000 was raised. At the instigation of the local representative of the receiver, David Fell, the remaining £40,000 was allocated to the New South Wales Government, which agreed to similar terms as the participating debenture holders. At this lower level of capitalisation, it was estimated that the mine would provide a 23% return. With the finance in place, the company's receivers, in early November 1915, gave instructions to recommence operations, with the plan to resume smelting ore again by the beginning of February 1916. The first blister copper was produced in early February 1916. By mid-March 1916, a second furnace was in production, and the plant was capable of producing around 12 tons of copper daily. In October 1916, the British Munitions Department agreed to buy the entire production of most of the larger Australian copper mines, including Great Cobar, for £120 per ton. High copper prices assisted the reopened Great Cobar, but none of the operation's earlier difficulties had been resolved. The imbalance of 'basic' and 'siliceous' ore, in particular, became ever more acute. By then, mining was occurring at the lower levels of the mine, making it more difficult to bring it to the surface. Neither had the workforce issues diminished. E. Hogan Taylor Edgar Hogan Taylor (1878 – 1949), better known as E. Hogan Taylor, was a metallurgist and a graduate of the South Australian School of Mines. He began his career at the BHP smelters at Port Pirie. He was later the metallurgist and, from mid 1908, the manager of the large Perseverance gold mine, at Boulder in Western Australia. In 1913, around the time that Taylor left the Perseverance mine, there were concerns—later proven false—that the gold there was petering out. Hogan was appointed superintendent of the Great Cobar mine in 1914, when it was uncertain whether the mine would reopen, and only mine-filling operations were in progress. He would be the last manager of the mine, under the title of resident manager, with overall control of the mine being in the hands of the London-based receiver, Arthur F. Whinney (1865–1927) and the receiver's local manager, accountant and former mayor of the Municipality of Manly, William Horner Fletcher (1851–1931) of David Fell & Company. Taylor was confronted by serious industrial relations problems, less than a year after the Great Cobar mine reopened. where the Great Cobar's ex-chief engineer and ex-metallurgist also found employment. From late 1925, he was general manager of Burmah Corporation's vast lead-silver mine and smelter at Namtu, also known as the Bawdwin Mine, in what was then Burma. He retired, in 1941, and died at his home in Toorak, Melbourne, in November 1949. Some saw the strike action as disloyal, in a time of war, when copper was needed for munitions, but the unionists claimed that they had no alternative left before striking. In early February 1917, agitators from the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) held open-air meetings in Cobar; they recruited new members, resulting in violent altercations with members of the miners' union. In October 1918, smelter operations were briefly suspended due to low levels of ore in the bins, Mr E. Hogan Taylor, the manager of the mine, explained the suspension was due to four causes, all related to the workforce; abnormal absenteeism following pay day; absences due to influenza; underground workers had struck for two days following the fatal accident in which Patrick Hannan died; and a general shortage of workers over a period of many weeks. Accidents (1915–1919) Just after work at the mine had recommenced, in November 1915, there was a freak accident in which a miner, Fred Oding, was killed. He fell out of a cage that had unexpectedly jolted upward to around 10 feet above the surface. He then tumbled over a divider, into the open shaft compartment, grasped the divider briefly, and then fell to his death. In March 1916, a miner, Alftred Murray, died of severe injuries that he received in a rockfall, a fractured skull exposing part of his brain, a fractured thighbone, numerous lacerations, and shock. In September 1916, Joseph Buckley lost his footing and fell heavily. The large piece of heavy timber that he was carrying on his shoulder also fell, breaking his neck and killing him. In December 1916, George Green was killed in a rockfall. Tom Glasson died in February 1917, after falling down an ore pass. In March 1917, two men, Charles Naughton and Samuel McCaughey, were killed when six tons of rock from the roof of a stope fell on them. In April 1917, a miner, James Bond, suffered numerous fractures, in all four limbs, but no head or internal injuries, and remained conscious, after he fell down an ore pass, in what was described as a "''Bond's extraordinary escape''". In October 1918, Patrick Hannan was crushed to death in a rockfall. Late in the mine's life, in January 1919, there was a near miss, when an empty cage dropped 1,400 feet down the main shaft, smashing into the bottom. Contention with C.S.A. Limited In its heyday, the Great Cobar was the dominant copper mine of the Cobar field, but that status was no longer uncontested by 1916. In 1910, the C.S.A. Mine—until then a modest silver-lead mine—identified a large copper resource. and it opened in January 1918. One of the reasons that had been used to justify the railway extension was to ship low-grade 'basic' ore from the C.S.A. to the smelters of the Great Cobar Mine; it would be mixed with Great Cobar's 'siliceous.' ore, mainly as a flux for smelting, replacing limestone brought from much further away by rail. Such an arrangement held out a lifeline to the Great Cobar, but was never begun. and not the best outcome, considering the Cobar region as a whole. By early 1919, there was an acrimonious disagreement between the management of the two companies, likely driven by the unresolved dispute over which company would dominate copper production in the Cobar mining field. The outcomes were that Great Cobar did not take any of C.S.A.'s low-grade ore as flux, Great Cobar still needed to source limestone, and the new railway was under-utilised, although the railway branch line was still of great benefit, but to C.S.A. only. == End of operations (March 1919) ==

Closure In the end, the existential threat to the Great Cobar came from the falling price of copper, after the end of the First World War in 1918. During the war, copper was £135 per ton, falling to £122 after the Armistice, and by March 1919 to £78, with the prospect of a further decline. At the prevailing copper prices, the Great Cobar's vast operations were no longer profitable. At 4 pm on 16 March 1919, smelting operations ceased. Over the life of Great Cobar Limited, the company had paid only one dividend of 15 shillings on its £5 shares, but had paid interest to the 6% debentures holders, up to the time of the appointment of the receiver in 1914. After 1914, the shareholders were no longer involved, having lost both all their money and control of the company. The debenture holders were also repaid the £62,000 that they had advanced in 1915. Also repaid, with 6% interest and a bonus, was the £40,000 loan from the NSW Government made in the same year. == Aftermath (1919–1965) ==

Possible resumption For a time, hopes were held that the mine would reopen. The NSW Treasurer stated that the government would not provide financial assistance to reopen the mine. After the mine closed, affected mine workers were given a weekly relief payment, for each adult and dependent child, but also could be granted a free railway pass to encourage them to leave Cobar. The NSW Government identified around 1,500 job openings in other parts of New South Wales. Apparently, many workers initially stayed in Cobar, preferring to live on relief payments, expecting the mine to reopen. around a month after the mine closed. In May 1919, Hogan Taylor announced that the equipment in the mine up to the No. 10 level had been removed and that the pumps were being shut down, leaving about six months before water would reach that level. The pumps were stopped, but in August 1919 Hogan Taylor announced that dewatering would recommence to keep water below No.11 level, to protect the stopes there and on higher levels. Any expectations of the reopening of the Great Cobar furnaces were doomed. A report by the NSW Mines Department concluded that the mine was unprofitable, highlighting yet again the lack of basic ore. The report raised the possibility of smelting remaining ore from the Great Cobar and Chesney mines at the newer C.S.A. smelter in the end, it could never supply the much-needed 'basic ore', or be operated jointly with the Great Cobar, because by mid-1920, it too was totally closed, due to an underground fire. David Fell formulated a plan to start a limited operation to produce copper concentrate, by the flotation process, at another mine owned by Great Cobar Limited, the Cobar Gold Mine (Fort Bourke Mine). In late 1919, some exploratory mine work was commenced at the Cobar Gold mine, in connection with the flotation tests. It would need £100,000 in new capital to establish the flotation scheme at the Cobar Gold Mine. The limited operation was envisaged as just the first step in a larger initiative to link the mines in the area by light railways, and operate the mines in the Cobar area as one joint operation, eventually perhaps resulting in mining resuming at the Great Cobar. Fell's plan did not win support of the debentures holders. Final end In June 1920, the receiver in London issued an order that the assets of the Great Cobar be realised. The Great Cobar was to remain closed, permanently. Over the entire life of the mine, from 1871 to final closure in 1919, total production was near to 110,000 tons of copper, of which in excess of 50,000 tons was produced during the yeas that the mine was run by Great Cobar Limited or its receiver. The assets were advertised for sale, by tender, in March 1921. Sale of assets and demolition In August 1921, the Great Cobar mine and smelter assets at Cobar were purchased by A.A. Goninan, a Newcastle-based engineering company, which only wanted to dismantle some large industrial buildings and relocate them to its site, at Broadmeadow, and sell off or scrap the rest. The electrolytic refinery at Lithgow had been closed since 1911, and parts of its equipment were sold and relocated to the C.S.A.'s new, but short-lived electrolytic refinery at Kandos. The Lithgow site was sold to its neighbour, Hoskins Iron and Steel, as was the Great Cobar's coal mine. Hoskins also purchased 12,000 tons of coke left at the Cobar site and some rolling stock—bogie ore wagons, matte wagons, and end-dump slag wagons—all of which went to the steelworks at Lithgow. Old, worn-out slag wagons were scrapped. Goninan took the wooden hopper four-wheel ore cars to Newcastle, where they were refurbished and sold to collieries, for use as 'non-air' wagons. Valuable machines that could be relocated easily were stripped from the plant. The overhead crane from the powerhouse ended up at the Hebburn No.2 Colliery, where they supplied supplied direct current to the colliery and parts of the township of Weston, until 1946. Two of the locomotives from Great Cobar were sold to the same colliery; the chassis of one was converted to a guard's van, and the other was converted to an electrically-operated yard crane. The electricity generating equipment sold for £35,000 and was disassembled and relocated, by rail, to Wagga Wagga. It was reinstalled in the new power station and supplied the regional town from May 1922 until March 1928. By February 1924, the only substantial piece of machinery still at the site was the winding engine. The winder ended up at the Steelworks Colliery at Lithgow. The larger of the two remaining chimneys had already lost its highest 12 feet, which collapsed in 1931—leaving it with the sloping top shown in this photograph—and it was later demolished, in 1935. The smaller remaining chimney was demolished in 1957.A visitor to Cobar, in 1928, observed "''a fine panoramic view of the Great Cobar Copper Mine, situated within a quarter mile distant. Extending to the right is a huge mountain of melted slag, resembling in appearance some prehistoric monster, lying there dormant forever. Turning slightly to the left you see the foundation and lower portion of Australia's mightiest chimney stack now demolished. Then you see the remains of the power-house, and lying amongst the ruins, and broken bricks, are the enormous flue pipes of the copper smelters, tangled and broken as though having collapsed in disgust.''" In September 1933, a huge fire ripped through what remained of the Great Cobar. The fire was deliberately lit, with the ore bins and the poppet head set alight. Burning debris fell down the main shaft, setting fire to underground timbers. The town was enveloped in dense, choking, sulphurous smoke from burning timber and ore. It was expected that the fire would burn for a week—there being no means to suppress the fire—until there was nothing combustible left above the waterline. The chimney for the converters was blown up, for its bricks, in September 1935. In 1920, the C.S.A mine at Elouera closed unexpectedly due to an underground fire, 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. The effect of the mine closures on the town of Cobar was dramatic. One of the earlier impacts was that the town lost its electric street lighting in 1920. It was reported, in 1924, that 700 houses had been demolished and removed, that another 700 houses had fallen or were in ruins, and that many of its hotels were shuttered. The public school and large hospital were still open, but both had many unused rooms. In 1926, the twelve-room house once occupied by the manager of the Great Cobar could be rented for one shilling per week, but there were no takers at that rent. Later in the 1930s, two of the mines once owned by Great Cobar Limited, the Chesney Mine and the Cobar Gold Mine, were reopened by the New Occidental company, and both worked until 1952. The rival C.S.A. mine was reopened in the 1960s, and continues in operation. The town of Cobar survived the two lengthy interruptions in mining activity, but its population never returned to its heyday population when the Great Cobar was operating. == Remnants ==

The administration office building of the Great Cobar mine has become the Great Cobar Museum and Visitor Information Centre. It survived by being bought by a local man, in May 1925, and would otherwise have been demolished. Over a century after the mine's closure, much of the remaining Great Cobar mine site is fenced and off-limits to the public for safety reasons. Behind and to the south of the museum is a large piece of land which was once the mine and smelter site, and some ruins and remnants. The open-cut mullock quarry is now a lake on the site. At the southern and eastern ends of the site is the vast black-coloured slag dump. In the north-eastern corner of the site, the concrete structure supporting the huge 'Cobar' sign, at the entrance to the town, is a relic of the Great Cobar mine. Some converter vessels from the Great Cobar have been recovered and provided to the heritage centre. One of the electric locomotives used at the mine—the one which became a colliery brake van but has been partially restored—is also preserved at the heritage centre. The larger, second 'Mine Tank', dating from 1882 which has been controlled by Cobar council since 1932. Cobar Cemetery is the final resting place of many who died as a result of fatal accidents at the mine and also of Sidwell Kruge (later Dean) who first identified the rock samples from Cobar as copper ore, and the first mine manager, Captain Thomas Lean. File:Great Cobar Heritage Centre 001.JPG|Great Cobar Museum & Cobar Visitors' Centre, the former administration offices. File:Cobar, NSW - Great Cobar mine, slag dump (Aug 2024).jpg|Part of the vast slag dump, viewed from Kidman Way (Aug 2024) File:Great Cobar mine - Slag with colouration due to copper (Sept 2025).jpg|Slag specimen from the Great Cobar mine, with colouration due to the presence of copper. File:Great Cobar Limited - Share Warrant.jpg|Great Cobar Ltd share warrant. This one was issued after additional capital was authorised in late 1910 (note the red-coloured overprinting). == Recent mining activity ==

The Great Cobar mine itself never reopened, but in 2022, planning permission was granted to once again mine within its boundaries. A deposit of copper-silver-gold ore has been identified, at a depth of around 1000 m, which is more than double the depth of the deepest of the old Great Cobar mine workings. The new resource is estimated to contain 47,000 tonnes of copper and 61,000 ounces of gold, with an estimated mining life of four to five years. leaving the old Great Cobar mine site safely cordoned off and undisturbed. == References ==