Cobar is a copper town in the middle of New South Wales, about seven hundred kilometres west of Sydney, and a short drive out of town a water tank from 1901 stands on the red earth with the sky all around it. For most of a century it held the town's water. Now it holds music. Composer Georges Lentz and architect Glenn Murcutt spent the best part of twenty years turning it into the Cobar Sound Chapel, which opened on 2 April 2022. Inside the ten metre tank they cast a concrete cube, five metres on each side, with a round opening in the ceiling for the sky and a loudspeaker set into each of its four walls. Blue corner windows carry the art of Cobar artist Sharron Ohlsen, and a pair of tall concrete walls leads you in from the dirt. Lentz wrote the music for this place and no other: String Quartet(s), forty three hours of it, recorded by the Sydney quartet The Noise and shaped by the outback and its night skies, by dot painting and by the graffiti already on the tank's walls. It plays around the clock, moving from near silence to passages that fill the whole tank, and on a still day it spills out across the scrub.
Visiting is simple and a little bit of an adventure. Entry is free, and the key lives at the Great Cobar Museum on the highway in town, where you leave some ID and a refundable cash bond and head out along an unsealed road to the gates. There are no facilities at the site, which is part of the point: nothing out there but the tank, the music and the country. In 2023 the National Trust (NSW) gave the chapel its award for adaptive reuse, the gentle art of giving an old building a new life. Cobar Shire Council gave the land and upgraded the road, and the first permission came from the late Lilliane Brady OAM, the town's long serving mayor, whose name sits on the chapel's own pages. Go in the late afternoon, when the light comes through the opening above and the rust on the old steel glows, and give yourself longer than you think. Then come out, and look up. It is Ngiyampaa Wangaaypuwan country, and the stars that shaped the music are the same ones overhead.
Good to know
- Where: about 1.5 kilometres west of Cobar, off the Barrier Highway, outback New South Wales. Cobar is roughly eight hours' drive from Sydney, or a short flight.
- Key and bond: Great Cobar Museum, (02) 6836 5806, bookings essential; free entry, ID and a refundable $100 cash bond. Ask the museum about hours when you book.
- Bring: water, a hat, a torch for the drive back, and patience; the music has long quiet stretches.
- No toilets at the site; the access road is unsealed.
- More: cobarsoundchapel.com
Sources and links
An Earth to Sea News original. Details from the Cobar Sound Chapel's own pages, the NSW Government's visitor listing and the National Trust (NSW) awards. Photographs: Oliver Strewe.
- Cobar Sound Chapel The chapel, the music, the people and how to get the key.
- Cobar Sound Chapel, NSW Government visitor listing Location and the museum contact.
