PHOTO: An artist’s drawing of what the completed Iron Ring in Cobar will look like [Image: Peter Rogers]
According to the Macquarie Dictionary an ‘iron ringer’ is a person born in Cobar, and there are plans afoot create an actual iron ring monument in town to celebrate Iron Ringers.
Local Historian and Convener of the Iron Ring Fundraising Committee, John Collins, says the term has been widely used for 50 or 60 years and was invented by Clarry Pretty, who was born in Cobar in 1919-20.
“Clarry was a Cobar boy all his life. It was after the closure of the New Occidental Mine in 1952, that Clarry coined the term,” Mr Collins said.
“When the mines closed some left town, some stayed, some never came back.”
“People were born in Cobar despite the fact they had to move away, they are a part of Cobar, they are part of an iron ring and that cannot be broken,” he said…