Maree Swimma

After living in Cobden for 2.5 years I was very pleased to leave and won’t be returning - ever! If you are looking for peace and quiet I would recommend to avoid. For a small town it generates a lot of noise. While the Fonterra factory creates jobs it also creates much noise with trucks 24/7. However, there seems to be other traffic/trucks that aren’t associated with the factory that use Cobden as a bypass e.g. a short cut to Warrnambool or to Simpson and the surrounds. Just sit outside the BP Cobden and you will see the volume of traffic is incredibly high. When the Simpson speedway is on there’s also copious amounts of traffic passing through Cobden in the middle of the night. There is also an airfield that’s walking distance from town that has light aircraft circling around town throughout the year. Close to the airfield is a go-kart area that you will hear noise from all weekend when it’s operating. The football oval is located right in the middle of town which on game days and practice nights, again, is responsible for a lot of vehicles coming and going. And don’t expect a peaceful walk around town as there is a preponderance of barking dogs day and night. During Spring every second person that has a ride on mower is constantly mowing, and most of the ride ons are extremely loud. Another problem was the planned and unplanned power outages, the bulk of which were the latter. Approximately every six weeks there was a disruption to the power supply. When I left earlier this year (2021) I was given a credit from Powercor with no prompting from me which shows how bad it was there. In conclusion, the majority of noise could have been avoided had there been proper town planning years before by putting the noise polluters further from town rather than right in it. It will only get worse so take my advice and avoid. There are much better and quieter towns to live in.