Canbelego is a village in the Orana region of New South Wales, Australia. It is now virtually a ghost town but was once a much larger settlement associated with the Mount Boppy Gold Mine. The name also refers to the surrounding rural locality identified for postal and statistical purposes. At the 2021 census, the population of Canbelego, including its surrounding area, was 54, up from 39 in 2016, but the village itself had only four residents in early 2020. Between 1907 and 1917, the population was around 2,000.
Location
It is located approximately 640 km north-west of Sydney, 50 km east of Cobar and 5 km south of the nearest point on the Barrier Highway.
History
Aboriginal and early settler history
The area now known as Canbelego is part of the traditional lands of Wangaaypuwan dialect speakers (also known as Wangaibon) of Ngiyampaa people.
The Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell and his expedition had camped and obtained water, in early 1845, at a place that he called "Canbelego" but that was not the later site of the village; it was a location—on the Bogan river and near to the modern-day locality of Grahweed—about 30 km from Nyngan. As Mitchell tried to use local language names whenever possible, it is likely that the name Canbelego is derived from the local aboriginal dialect. Grahweed and the later site of Canbelego lie at opposite ends of area of the County of Canbelego, and it is likely that the village took its name from the county.
After settler colonisation, the area of the village was partly within Robinson County (Parish of Cohn) and partly within Canbelego County (Parish of Florida).
Mount Boppy Gold Mine
The original Mount Boppy Gold Mine operated from 1901 to 1922. It was, at the time, regarded as being the largest gold producer in New South Wales. Over that period, the mine produced 13.5 tons (433,000 ounces) of gold. By the end of 1912, shareholders had received a return of 356% on their capital investment, rising to 500% over the entire 21 years of operation.
After reef mining ceased in September 1921, the old company reprocessed tailings and remnant ore stocks, until finally closing the site and selling off equipment, in 1923.
Between 1929 and 1941, there was minor production of gold from remnant ore and attempts to process tailings. Around 500,000 tonnes of tailings—still containing an average of 3g of gold per tonne—were left on the surface. Starting in 1974, these tailings were reprocessed to recover more gold. Later mining operations included reprocessing of tailings sand that had been used to back fill the old underground workings. In recent years, the mine was reopened as an open-cut operation, but later placed under care and maintenance.
It is estimated that over its entire life, from hard-rock mining and tailings reprocessing, the mine has produced 500,000 ounces of gold. Only with the opening of the New Occidental mine at Wrightville, near Cobar, in the 1930s, did the Mount Boppy mine lose its place as the most productive gold mine in New South Wales.
In 2020, drilling revealed intersections of high-grade gold-bearing ore below the bottom of the existing pit. Gold was again being mined there in 2021, and that was expected to continue, until 2022, with limited mine site rehabilitation.
Other mines
South-east of the Mount Boppy mine was the Mount Boppy South mine, which was worked in conjunction with the main Mount Boppy Gold Mine. Other nearby mines included the Canbelego Copper Mining Co. (also known as 'the Burra', located 5 miles south of the village), the North Mount Boppy Gold Mining Co., and the Restdown Copper Mining Co. (15 miles south-east of Canbelego). Nearer to the railway station at Boppy Mountain was the Boppy Boulder Gold Mine.
The deposit that was formerly associated with the Canbelego Copper Mining Co. and later Canbelego Copper Mines Limited—mined between 1906 and 1914—was once again, in 2022, the focus of exploration as a copper resource.