Elouera, Cobar, New South Wales

Mineralisation in outcrops, in the area that would later be the C.S.A. mine, was first identified in 1872, and led to the first exploratory mining. It was only in 1905 that a commercially-viable lead-silver deposit was found. It was this deposit that was the first successfully mined at the C.S.A. Mine.[5]

Elouera's site in relation to C.S.A. and Tinto mines.[13]

In the times before motorised transport, miners need to live close to their work and the Cobar township was over 22 km away, by road. Before Elouera, the area was known as CSA Mines, and almost certainly a settlement developed near the mine around 1906. The Town of Elouera was proclaimed 6 March 1907.[3][4] A new hotel and a post office opened there in 1907.[14][15] The company erected three houses for its staff and a boarding house for fifty men.[5]

In 1909, the CSA Mine closed, when the original lead-silver deposit was exhausted. It reopened, in 1910, after a copper deposit was found. By then, with no returns to shareholders, £100,000 had been spent on exploration and development. Around 1912, the adjacent Tinto Mine was amalgamated with the C.S.A mine, and the two were thereafter worked as one operation.[5]

There was a school at Elouera from July 1908 to May 1921, with two interruptions when the school closed for short periods during 1915 and 1916-17. It was a half time school, sharing its teacher with Meryula Siding (just to the east of Cobar), from October 1915 to March 1916.[16][17][18] Before the holidays began at the end of 1918, the school had 35 pupils using the 16 by 14 foot schoolhouse.[19] In 1919-1920, an existing school building was relocated to Elouera from Mount Drysdale.

By April 1917, the long-awaited extension of the railway line from Cobar to the C.S.A. Mine was under construction,[20] and it opened in January 1918.[21] The company erected another eleven houses for its workers in Elouera in 1917.[5] The mine had to close due to lack of water, during part of 1919. After it reopened, it was employing 250 men. New blocks of land were being sold in the town in 1917[22] and in 1920.[23] Another hotel opened around August 1919;[24] Elouera then had two hotels, the new Royal Hotel and the Elouera Hotel.[25]

Just as the future of Elouera was looking bright, the copper price had collapsed in 1919. The company had spent more than £200,000 on developing the mine and its smelters, and £32,000 on an electrolytic copper refinery at Kandos. The smelting section of the new plant at Kandos entered production, around September 1919, but its new electrolytic refinery would never enter service.[5][26]

The rapid decline of Elouera began with the unexpected cessation of mining at the C.S.A. Mine, due to an underground fire that broke out on 20 March 1920. The fire was burning mainly in the timber supporting various parts of the underground workings.[27] The ultimate cause of fire was never identified.

The mine was sealed, in an attempt to extinguish the fire, and initially smelting operations continued.[27] In April 1920, the smelters closed.[28] When the mine was unsealed on 3 May 1920, it was found to be full of dangerous gases, and could only be inspected by men wearing 'Proto smoke helmets', an early type of self-contained breathing apparatus. The fire broke out again, around 6 May 1920, and spread further into the workings, propelled by flaming carbon monoxide gases. The mine was again sealed, and a decision was taken to ask the government to assist in bringing water by train to flood the mine. That had not happened, by 30 June 1920, when rainfall provided water, which was then used in an attempt to flood the mine,[29][30][31] apparently without success. An analysis of the mine air, in April 1921, revealed a 10% carbon monoxide content,[32] close to its lower explosive limit;[33] that was bad enough but the oxygen content was still 13.6%, more than enough oxygen to keep the timber smouldering. The company announced, in November 1921, that with copper prices low, the level of dangerous gases in the mine being high, and the prospect of fire breaking out, the mine would not reopen.[32]

Once it was clear that the mine would not reopen Elouera's inhabitants, amenities, and businesses departed rapidly. The school closed, in May 1921,[16] followed by the post office, in December 1921.[15] The Royal Hotel had closed by October 1922,[34] and the Elouera Hotel also closed. By May 1923, reportedly, there was only one family left living in Elouera;[35] the family of Robert Gardiner, the mine's accountant, was living there, at least as late as 1930.[36] It is probable that, after 1930, or thereabout, Elouera was deserted.

The C.S.A. Mine's closure was one of three that severely affected the Cobar area, in rapid succession; the others were the closure of the vast Great Cobar Mine, the town's main employer, in March 1919,[37] and the unexpected closure of the large Occidental Gold Mine, at Wrightville, in July 1921.[38] The closure of the Great Cobar and C.S.A. Mines affected smaller copper mines that used the larger mines' smelters.[28] As work for miners disappeared, buildings were removed, from Wrightville and Cobar, to be re-erected in more prosperous places,[39] and the same probably happened at Elourera.

The plant and buildings at Kandos were sold off in 1925; the timber from its large building was reused at the nearby cement plant, but its prominent concrete chimney stack would stand until the 1980s.[40][41]

The fire in the C.S.A mine was reported to be still burning in 1935.[42] The company kept the mine, and its smelter, for many years. However, the circumstances were never appropriate to reopen it, during the years before the company began to be wound up in December 1946. Before then, around early 1942, the mine's equipment had been sold.[43][44]