Cobar - Peak Gold Mine
Cobar NSW. Beautiful warm sunny day. Catching up on washing, emails, sorting out pictures and building pages on sites. Sunny and warm. Not a cloud in the sky. Drove out to Peak Gold Mine to have a look. There was a short walk there with some old mining equipment and information. A viewing point looking over to the mine and buildings ended the walk.
There was a round trough thing called The Puddling Machine??? - weird machine!! circa 1896, filled with water. It was powered by two horses! They were connected to water paddles on either side of the circular trough and they had to run around and around all day.
Into the puddling machine would go the crushed rocks from the mine, the paddles stirring the solid material and water. The rocks were washed and sank to the bottom. The water overflowed over the top and the crushed rocks were removed and the gold sorted out. That would have been a hot, thirsty, job for those poor horses.
We could see an old mine shaft that has been abandoned for many years, with lots of black slate lying around it. The wooden Head Frame was dated back to 1905, and it is still standing.
This trip was a bit disappointing, I thought we were going to see some of the workings of the actual gold mine. Oh well, we had a nice walk.
Cobar 
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