Cobb & Co - 1853
- Australian land transport- coach travel - Freeman Cobb - James Rutherford - Bathurst NSW -
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From the 1850s onward the story of coaching in Australia is essentially the
story of Cobb & Co.
Established in 1853 by Freeman Cobb and three other Americans, and acquired by
James Rutherford and partners in about 1859, this organisation quickly moved to
a dominant position in Australian land transport.
Its genius for service and its adaptability in the face of increasing railway
competition allowed it to maintain its position for nearly 60 years, and it was
not until 1924 — when ousted by the service-car rather than the railway that the
last Cobb & Co. coach ran.
The Origin of Cobb & Co.
The first of the important gold finds in Victoria was made in 1851. Among the
gold-seekers were a number of Americans who had worked for the great coaching
organisations of Wells Fargo and the Adams Express Co. in the United States.
There were also merchants like George F. Train who imported American coaches,
which were more suited to Australian conditions than the vehicles of English
design.
In 1853 Freeman Cobb, John Peck, James Swanton, John Lamber - all of Americans -
imported several American coaches and commenced services from Melbourne to
Sandridge (Port Melbourne) in 1854, and later to the goldfields. The mining
areas were badly served as regard to transport, and Cobb & Co’s coaches soon
returned a handsome profit. The original partners sold out their interest and
only Peck stayed in Australia.
The business of Cobb & Co. had already changed hands four times when it was
taken over by a company consist of James Rutherford, Alexander Robertson, John
Wagner, Walter Russell Hall, William Whitney, and WaIter Bradley. Rutherford
reorganised and extended the Victorian services and secured a monopoly of the
mail contracts.
The Move to Bathurst.
The goldfields traffic was the backbone of Victorian coaching activities, but
as the railways extended to the mining centres, coaches lost their importance.
Following the great gold rush to Lambing Flat (now Young, NSW) the headquarters
of the firm were transferred to New South Wales and were established at Bathurst
in the central-west in 1862.
Bathurst remained the centre of operations for Cobb & Co. for more than 50
years. There the company built coaches not only for its own use but for other
firms as well. In addition to coaching activities, the firm bought pastoral
properties in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. It shipped Jarrah from
Western Australia to India, engaged in railway construction, and founded the
Eskbank iron works at Lithgow, NSW.
The coaching business was extended to Queensland in 1865, when H. Barnes, one of
the company’s road managers, put a coach on the Brisbane-Ipswich run. By January
1867 Cobb & Co’s coaches were running from the Brisbane centre to lpswich,
Toowoomba, Warwick, Dalby,
Condamine, and Roma, and at the end of the year to Gympie.
The Queensland business was formed into a separate company in 1881. By 1870 Cobb
& Co. in the three eastern colonies were harnessing 6000 horses every day, their
coaches were travelling 45000 kilometres per week, and they were receiving
£95000 a year in mail subsidy.
As new railways were constructed, the coach routes were pushed farther out to
serve the back country, and they were partly instrumental in opening up these
areas for settlement by establishing reliable communication between them and the
centres of supply.
During the I880s the greatest development of the business was in Queensland,
where before the end of that decade 6500 kilometres of coach route were
controlled by Cobb & Co.
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Drivers and Coaches.
Cobb & Co’s service was famous for the skill and popularity of its drivers. Many
of them, particularly in the early days, were Americans, who were more
experienced in handling large teams of horses than were the local men. The
latter, however, quickly acquired the art.
Their job had its hazards, especially in the gold rush days. Many of the coaches
carried considerable quantities of gold, and although these were usually
escorted they were still subject to attack from bushrangers.
Perhaps the most famous of all Australian coach-drivers was Edward Devine
(“Cabbage-tree Ned”), who was born at Brighton, Tas., on 19 August 1833. Ned
drove for several years between Geelong and Ballarat, and in 1862 he drove the
“Great Coach” which was drawn by 12 grey horses and included among its 90
passengers the first English cricket team to visit Australia. Ned drove the
English cricketers throughout their tour, and at its conclusion was the guest of
honour at a banquet in Geelong where he received a purse of 300 sovereigns. He
died at Ballarat in December 1909.
The first Cobb & Co. coaches were built in Concord, USA. The body was suspended
on “springs” of leather straps, five to eight plies deep. At each end they were
attached to iron jacks, and the vehicles were sometimes called “jack coaches”.
The leather springs produced a rolling motion, which was preferable to the jars
and humps of the earlier vehicles, but which nevertheless sometimes caused “sea”
sickness.
American hickory was largely used in the body work and wheels. There are still
examples of Cobb & Co’s coaches in Australia, but they figure only as museum
pieces with occasional appearances in pageants.
The last Cobb coach was taken off the Yeulba—Surat run in 1924. It is now in the
Queensland Museum. Another Cobb coach is preserved in the grounds of Vaucluse
House, Sydney. A third vehicle was presented to the trustees of the National
Museum, Melbourne, by the Nisbett family. The Hay Goal Museum and Cultural
Centre also possesses an original Cobb & Co. coach.
The largest coach ever built in Australia seems to have been the “Leviathan”.
James Rutherford speaks of it as running from Castlemaine to Kyneton drawn by 22
horses which had pale blue rosettes over their ears. As the driver could not
manage 22 reins he had the help of two postillions (other accounts speak of four
postillions).
Although there were coaches in Australia decades before Freeman Cobb came from
America to help in founding the coach line that bore his name, and although Cobb
& Co. never ran coaches in South Australia, Western Australia or Tasmania, the
name of Cobb has always been inseparably associated with coaching in Australia.
The firm’s driving power and the resourcefulness of its men became legends.
The old coaching days also had a special appeal to poets, notably Will Ogilvie,
and Henry Lawson who immortalised the firm in the ballad, “The Lights of Cobb
and Co.”