Dust storm has the whole town talking about the past
Wednesday September 30, 2009
This picture of a dust storm in Cobar in 1913 was taken from the top storey of the Empire Hotel. ▪ Photo courtesy Great Cobar Heritage Centre
Cobar, along with many other towns and cities across most of eastern Australia, last week experienced a phenomenal dust storm.
However history shows that dust storms of this calibre were a regular occurrence in Cobar’s early years.
Local historian Glenis Prisk recalls her memories of going to school in Cobar in the 1940s when the dust storms would hit.
“They’d send a message through to the school and the kids would be sent home.
“They’d collect the kids from Wrightville and take them home and there’d be kids crying and screaming everywhere.”
Mrs Prisk said you could see the dust storms brewing on the horizon.
“So you had a little bit of warning.
“Many would prepare the evening meal, set it out on the table and then throw a sheet over it and wait until the storm had passed before you sat down to eat.
“Back in those days there was no air conditioning and no screens on the doors.
“They were all dirt roads, there were only a couple that had a bit of bitumen up the middle.
“There were no footpaths or paving, just dirt, stones and gravel.”
She said the storms were less frequent after a ‘green belt’ of vegetation was planted around the town.
“Jimmy Ward did that when he was mayor of Cobar. He had the green belt planted in the 40s.”
She said the effects of the green belt however were not really felt until the trees had grown to maturity in the late 1950s/early 1960s.
In earlier times, miners in the area cut down the scrub around the town to use particularly in the furnaces of the Great Cobar Mine.
Historical records at the museum report that by 1887 there wasn’t a tree within 15 miles of Cobar.
An excerpt from Shuttleton resident Annie McLennon’s memoirs from 1904 recalls a dust storm during shearing at Glenwood Station.
“They had to knock off shearing. The dust got into everything, into the jam. We had to eat the dust too. There was dust everywhere.
“You might get a whirly wind and everything that wasn’t nailed down blew away.
“All the empty tanks would be blown off the stands.
“And these days we complain if someone walks in a bit of dust on their boots.”
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