The Great Cobar Museum – making history live

The Great Cobar Museum at Cobar, a small mining community, was always the most prominent building in this township, an eight-hour drive north-west of Sydney.

Complete with a grand arched portico, the two-storey red-brick building, completed in 1912, originally functioned as the administration offices for the adjacent mine.

However, when Dunn & Hillam Architects first inspected the building, many of the windows had been boarded up and most of the ground floor was given over to storage, including mining artefacts dating from the early 1860s through to the 1970s.

“It was used as a boarding house from the 1930s and even by the local radio station,” architect Ashley Dunn, co-director of Dunn & Hillam Architects, who worked closely with co-director Lee Hillam and heritage architect, Peter Freeman, says.

Commissioned by the Cobar Shire Council, the Federation-style-museum is now a drawcard for both locals and those travelling from further afield to understand the history of this mine, the early community and the many artefacts left behind.

“There was a considerable amount to work through, both in terms of revealing the original structure and the multitude of objects,” says Hillam, who worked with 3-D Projects for the exhibition installations and Somewhere Landscape Architects to regenerate the grounds.

Recipient of the Adaptive Reuse Award and the Emagn Award, both from the Australian Institute of Architects (NSW Chapter), and numerous awards from the National Trust, the accolades also include the contribution made by young and emerging architect, Rose Davies, a colleague with the practice.

While Dunn & Hillam created a new ramp (previously a road) and reinstated a side verandah, the fabric of the original building can still be ‘read’.

“We wanted to avoid covering up the ‘scars’, preferring to unveil the history of the built form,” says Dunn, who even retained some soot marks on an exterior wall where there was once a fire.