Cumborah is a small rural village in north-western New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, in Walgett Shire, near the opal fields of Lightning Ridge

Lightning Ridge, New South Wales

Lightning Ridge is a town in north-western New South Wales, Australia, in Walgett Shire, near the southern border of Queensland. The Lightning Ridge area is a world epicentre of the mining of black opals and other opal gemstones. Lightning Ridge has the largest known deposits of black opals in the...

. Cumborah is about 36 km west of the Castlereagh Highway

Castlereagh Highway

The Castlereagh Highway is a state highway in New South Wales, Australia, also extending some kilometres into Queensland. It has been given the route number 55. The highway was recently extended past Gilgandra to include state route 86...

, and is served by the commercial centres of Lightning Ridge and Walgett

Walgett, New South Wales

Walgett is a town in North-West New South Wales, Australia and the seat of Walgett Shire. It is at the junction of the Barwon and Namoi rivers and near the junction of the Kamilaroi and Castlereagh Highways...

 which is 48 km to the south-east.

The road through Cumborah is main route to the nearby Glengarry, Grawin and Sheepyard opal

Opal

Opal is an amorphous form of silica related to quartz, a mineraloid form, not a mineral. 3% to 21% of the total weight is water, but the content is usually between 6% to 10%. It is deposited at a relatively low temperature and may occur in the fissures of almost any kind of rock, being most...

fields. Other prospectors also search nearby for agate, fossils, petrified wood, topaz and other semi-precious stones. The village is almost surrounded by mulga and cypress scrubland.

Population

In the 2006 census Cumborah and the surrounding region had a population of 492 persons, 63.6% were males and 36.4% were females, including 33 indigenous persons and 386 persons born in Australia (78.5%). Their main form of employment was in sheep, beef cattle and grain farming (42.9%) followed by non-metallic mineral mining.

History

In 1896 Cumborah was proclaimed a town and the local police station operated from 1898 until 1934. A small mail receiving office opened in 1892; this was upgraded to a post office in 1898 which was closed in 1963. The village had a provisional school from 1899 to 1903 and a public school from 1904 until 1943. A telephone office opened in 1901 and a manual exchange in 1912. By 1915 Cumborah had five telephone subscribers that could only contact Walgett or Dangar Bridge. From 1917 it was possible to telephone other local towns.

Early entertainment in Cumborah was provided by participating in or watching cricket, horseracing, sports days and tennis.

In the 2006 Census there were 315 occupied private dwellings in Cumborah and the surrounding area: 80.0% were separate houses and 20.0% were other dwellings.