20 Jan 10 - Cobar

By Lou: Celebrated my birthday in Cobar by having a pub meal which was walking distance from the caravan park. I invited Craig and Sam. It was a rare treat to be set up in camp before a civilised dinner time and with this daylight savings caper we were able to walk home in daylight too. Enjoyed looking through the heritage centre and learning about the history of Cobar which was built on copper mining. It’s hard not to be impressed with the tenacity and hard work of the miners, working a handpick for a 12 hour shift and achieving as much as a modern day drill will do in minutes. And recycling! The number of things an old kerosene tin got turned into would make Playschool presenters proud. But the women…if only they’d pulled out the Thermomix they could have been on the verandah sipping martinis before the men marched home. Spending so much time in the front passenger seat, I’ve become a little bit obsessed with identifying the type of cloud ahead. So I was delighted to pick up a Cloud Information Sheet from the Cobar Meteorological Station. You will be interested to know that the predominant cloud cover encountered to date has been cirrus. We also enjoyed a quick tour of the station and weather instruments conducted by Alison, who had to do a quick mental rehearsal of her spiel as visitors in the summer season are few and far between. We witnessed the daily release of the weather balloon which is automated and synchronised with around 80? other weather stations around Australia. Within minutes we could observe on computer the data that the weather balloon was collecting and transmitting. Craig also learned that you cannot rotate video footage after you’ve turned the camera on its side to film. As we drove away from the weather station we tuned into the local ABC radio and heard our very own tour guide Alison talking live to DJ Dougal about the weather forecast.
By Craig: I was impressed by the Cobar Heritage Centre as it told of the harsh and tough work environment of years gone by. After sighting the shaft entrance at the bottom of the open cut mine what impressed me was the evidence of 2 shafts almost a third of the way down but hand dug. See photo.