In 39 years, some things have changed and some haven’t

The first edition of The Cobar Weekly newspaper from February 6, 1986.

Tomorrow marks 39 years since the release of the first edition of The Cobar Weekly and while a lot has changed in almost four decades, some things are still the same.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that The Cobar Weekly is still run by a volunteer, not for profit committee.

The paper currently employs a staff of three to produce the paper each week and, for over a year now, the paper has been printed in full colour.

Our first edition on February 6, 1986 was black and white (although the couple of copies we have of our first edition are actually black and yellowed with age).

It was printed as a tabloid size paper (approximately A3).

In our first edition, the 1986 Australia Day award winners made our the front page with Pauline Hunter named the Citizen of the Year.

Other news items of interest from that first edition were: concerns with staffing levels at the Lilliane Brady Village (LBV) as just three Sisters (the Director of Nursing and two Nurses) were employed to cover three shifts for 24 hours a day, for the 14 residents; the acquisition of 963,000 hectares of land by the Army near Cobar (and more at Bathurst) on which the Army proposed to establish a school complex, maneuver and live firing area; and Cobar High School Year 12 students had performed well in their HSC exams with 60 per cent of the group of 14 students placed in the top half of students in the state. Two of those students had aggregates in the 85-90 per cent band.

Back then the paper had a half page TV Guide (which was dropped from the paper in in January 2020), it had four pages of Classified ads (the same amount as this week), we ran a Shire president’s column and also a Church news column.

The first edition had just one sports story about the Cobar Yabbies Senior Men’s Swimming Club hosting an Australia Day weekend carnival with 120 swimmers from Cobar, Nyngan, Wentworthville, Manly and Bondi Junction taking part.

Some of our advertisers in that first edition were: Dalgety Russell and Co (now trading as Nutrien Russell), WA & KT Cahill Plumbing, Cobar Shire Council, Empire Hotel and Cobar Services Club—all of whom still advertise with us today and for this we are very grateful.

It’s our advertisers (and our readers and members) who have helped the ‘Little Paper’ to survive and thrive over the past 39 years.

When it first commenced, The Weekly had a membership base of 37 local residents and today we have 52 members, including three surviving Life Members, Bill Barwood, Pauline Hunter and David Snelson.

Plans are already underway for BIG celebrations for our 40th birthday next year!