Coal Piles at Cobourg Harbour – c. 1955

This is the scene some 120 years after Cobourg’s harbour was first created.  Lumber and iron ore had been its first major exports.  More recently imports came to supply the Army depot (No. 26 Central Ordnance Depot) from 1953-1971.

The coal seen here is not for local use but for driving the locomotives on the east-west lines which passed through Cobourg.  Some older citizens still remember being the beneficiaries of kind engine drivers who did not worry when coal fell from their cars.

Now, over 60 years later, the harbour is almost entirely designed for pleasure, and very different.