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For Cobb & Co. in New Zealand, see Cobb & Co. (New Zealand). For the restaurant chain, see Cobb & Co. (restaurant).

Cobb & Co
Company typePrivate
GenreTransport
Founded1853
Founder
Defunct1927

Cobb & Co was the name used by several independent Australian coach businesses. The first company to use 'Cobb & Co' was established in 1853 by American Freeman Cobb and his partners. The name grew to great prominence in the late 19th century, when it was carried by many stagecoaches carrying passengers and mail to various Australian goldfields, and later to regional and remote areas of the Australian outback. The same name was used in New Zealand and Freeman Cobb used it in South Africa.

Although the Queensland branch of the company made an effort to transition to automobiles in the early 20th century, high overhead costs and the growth of alternative transport options for mail, including rail and air, saw the final demise of Cobb & Co. The last Australian Cobb & Co stagecoach ran in Queensland in August 1924.[1]

Cobb & Co has become an established part of Australian folklore commemorated in art, literature and on screen.[2] Parallels may be drawn between Australia's Cobb & Co and America’s Wells Fargo stagecoach services, both of which played similar and important roles in their respective countries' histories. Today, the name 'Cobb & Co' is used by a number of Australian bus operators.

Establishment

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Rhoden's Halfway House, Old Gippstown, built in 1863 at Pakenham for the Cobb & Co Gippsland route

The original Cobb & Co was established in Melbourne in 1853 at the height of the excitement created by the Victorian goldrushes by four newly arrived Americans – Freeman Cobb, John Murray Peck, James Swanton and John B. Lamber. At first they traded as the "American Telegraph Line of Coaches", a name that emphasized speed and progressiveness. With financial support from another newly arrived US businessman George Train, they arranged the importation of several US-built wagons and Concord stagecoaches.[1] By early 1854, Cobb & Co operated a daily service to Forest Creek and Bendigo and, soon afterwards, expanded the service to Geelong, as well as other goldfields such as Ballarat.[1][3][4]

Cobb & Co's horses were changed at stages every 10–15 miles along a stagecoach "line" often at inns or hotels that could also cater for the needs of drivers and passengers. As historian Susan Priestley notes, "Coach lines did not attempt to compete with... railways. Instead, as rail lines extended, coaches were transferred to feeder routes and were timetabled to link in with trains."[5]

Within a few years, Cobb & Co had established a reputation for efficiency, speed and reliability, although they had not won any of the lucrative mail contracts. Their imported Concord stagecoaches used thorough-brace technology, on which thick straps of leather suspended the body of the vehicle, providing passengers with greater comfort on the rough country roads when compared to coaches with traditional steel-springs.[6]

Under James Rutherford

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Cobb & Co coach at Winton, Queensland c 1890. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland

In May 1856, the four partners sold out. Cobb and Lamber returned to the US while Swanton continued in coaching for a few more years. John Peck stayed in Melbourne, eventually establishing a stock and station agency. Passing through the hands of a number of owners, Cobb & Co rose to greater prominence after 1861 when it was bought by a consortium of partners led by another North American, James Rutherford, who like Cobb had arrived during the gold rush. Rutherford's partners included Alexander William Robertson, John Wagner, Walter Russell Hall, William Franklin Whitney and Walter Bradley. Rutherford re-organised and extended the Victorian services and won a monopoly on major mail contracts.[1] By 1870 most of Victoria was serviced by a network of coach routes.

In 1860, Cobb & Co introduced its massive "Leviathan" coach on the Geelong-Ballarat service. Built in Ballarat by Morgan's coach works, "Leviathan" could accommodate up to sixty passengers and was drawn by a team of eight horses. The interior was fitted with five benches, and included a ladies' compartment in the front. There were a further seven benches on the roof.[7]

Expansion into NSW and Queensland

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In June 1862, Rutherford oversaw the extension of the business into New South Wales following news of the Lambing Flat gold rush. Rutherford moved ten coaches from Bendigo to Bathurst with great publicity to announce and establish Cobb & Co's presence. Bathurst became the headquarters of a new syndicate led by Rutherford and four others. Rutherford had intended to spend 6 months in Bathurst, but stayed on to the end of his days, becoming one of the city's leading citizens.[1] Rutherford established a Cobb & Co buggy and coachworks in Bathurst, and the firm also began to invest in properties — the first being "Buckiinguy" station near Nyngan, New South Wales. On the road, Cobb & Co began buying out or forcing out many New South Wales competitors.

Cobb & Co Coach, Kallangur, Queensland, unknown date

In 1865 Cobb & Co again expanded, this time into Queensland.[4] The first Cobb & Co service in Queensland was between Ipswich and Brisbane. In 1868, a service between Brisbane and Gympie commenced, running twice a week.[8] Services soon expanded into all parts of Queensland and otherwise isolated communities were able to maintain regular contact with the rest of the world.[9] In 1881 the business was transferred to a limited liability company with a capital of £50,000. The largest transport enterprise in Queensland it ran some 3000 horses a total of around 10,000 miles a week.[10] A large coachworks was established at Charleville in 1886. It turned out a variety of vehicles including over 120 coaches.[1]

In 1871, the formal links between the Victorian Cobb & Co (taken over by Robertson and Wagner) and Rutherford's New South Wales and Queensland operation were finally dissolved, although harmonious relations continued.[11] In Victoria coaches carrying the name "Cobb & Co" were operated by four local coaching firms running particular routes by mutual agreement and cooperation. In time, successive operators of the various Victorian stagecoach lines would continue to use the trading name Cobb & Co.[5]

In the 1870s, the fare for the 460km journey from Dalby to Roma in Queensland, was about £5 per day with an additional two shillings and sixpence (£-/2/6) for each meal and bed.[12] A driver's wage was in the vicinity of £10 to £14 per week, with free meals.[13]

Beyond Eastern Australia

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In the separate colony of South Australia an independent Cobb & Co Limited took over the South Australian mail and coach business of William Rounsevell in 1866 after several years of ruinous competition. Its ownership was held by four interests of a quarter each. One quarter by Canadians, Peleg Whitford Jackson & Jasper Bingham Meggs; one quarter by Fuller, Hill & Co; one quarter by Joseph Darwent and one quarter by Rounsevell's son Ben Rounsevell. This business was taken over by John Hill and Company and years later was merged into Graves, Hill & Co.[14]

Such was the renown of Cobb & Co that the name was also used on coaches operating beyond Australia. Charles Cole, and Henry and Charles Hoyt, who had operated coaches in Victoria, started businesses using the same name in New Zealand in 1863 and, very briefly, in Japan in 1868.[15][16]

Although he never returned to Australia, Freeman Cobb took his family to South Africa in 1871 to establish a Cobb & Co Ltd stagecoach service with Charles Cole, operating between Port Elizabeth and the new diamond fields at Kimberley. He died at Port Elizabeth in 1878.[17]

Cobb & Co in folklore

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Tom Roberts' 1895 painting "Bailed Up," painted near Inverell, NSW

Through the later 19th century travel by Cobb & Co coach was increasingly romanticized in literature but when Henry Lawson wrote the famous poem forewarning of its demise; The Lights of Cobb & Co in 1897,[18] the days of coaching were already coming to an end in Victoria and New South Wales and Australia was an increasingly urbanised society. The nationalistic art, music and writing of late 19th-century Australia romanticized a pioneering rural or "bush myth"[19] and Cobb & Co with its colourful drivers and managers easily fell into this tradition. Writer Sam Everingham also notes that Cobb & Co was "the first great home grown service provider Australia had known... Born out of the country's gold rushes, the name Cobb & Co has come to represent the pioneering spirit, a willingness to battle against the odds, to reliably connect far-flung communities."[20]

Carrying cash and gold, coaches were famously a regular target of bushrangers. Everingham notes that Cobb & Co's expansion into New South Wales coincided with an increase in the number of armed hold-ups by bushrangers. At least nine coaches were attacked in the Bathurst district in the seven months after the company established itself there.[21]

Tom Roberts, a key member of the Heidelberg School, painted "Bailed Up" near Inverell in 1895 modelling the figures on "local townspeople including (Cobb & Co) stagecoach driver 'Silent Bob Bates' who had been held up by local bushranger Captain Thunderbolt three decades earlier."[22]

Demise

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Cobb & Co's operations across Australia were eventually superseded by the expansion of railway networks, the arrival of cheap, reliable automobiles and the emergence of air mail. In 1920, the Charleville coachworks closed and by 1921, Cobb & Co in Queensland had lost most of its mail contracts running out of Charleville. The company also had a vast amount of debt due to over-expansion into industries like wool.[23] Rutherford had died in 1911 the same year the Company approved its first purchase of motor vehicles. In New South Wales the last coach probably ran on the Hebel-Goodooga-Brewarrina routes in 1913[24] while the last coach ran in Victoria from Casterton to Mount Gambier in 1916.[25] Australia's last horse-drawn stagecoach service was run by Cobb & Co from Surat to Yuleba in Queensland on 14 August 1924. With the rapid decline in wool prices in 1929, Cobb & Co Queensland finally went into liquidation.[1]

Gordon Studdert, a former employee, kept the Cobb & Co name as his Surat store business name until his death in 1955. Following a legal case and settlement with Studdert, the Cobb & Co name was acquired by the Redmans Transport company of Toowoomba, run by Bill Bolton MBE (1905–1973). Bolton also collected and preserved several Cobb & Co. horse-drawn coaches, now in the Toowoomba-based museum.

The 598-kilometre (372 mi) Cobb Highway in western New South Wales commemorates Cobb & Co.

Preserved coaches

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A replica concord coach at Sovereign Hill, Ballarat
A replica Cobb & Co coach at Timbertown
Cobb & Co coach at Tumblong, NSW

Only one Concord or "Jack" coach of the type imported from the United States by Cobb & Co in the 1850s and 1860s survives. According to Deborah Tranter, while Australian built stagecoaches utilized the thorough-brace technology found on the Concord coach, they were generally smaller, lighter, straighter in line and had less room for passengers than the US coaches. Coaches built at the Charleville coachworks were generally designed for either 8 or 14 passengers.[26][27]

In addition to reproductions, a number of original Cobb & Co stagecoaches still exist in varying states of preservation. Often repainted in the 20th century, the provenance of some is now difficult to determine.[28]

These include:

  • An imported "Concord" coach built by Abbot-Downing Company of New Hampshire. Imported by F.B. Clapp and Co, c1869 and used in the Ballarat area. It is preserved in original condition and held by Museum Victoria[29]
  • Another stagecoach, possibly built in Geelong, Victoria c1880, is held by Museum Victoria. It is believed to have been the last mail coach to operate commercially in Victoria — in 1916.[30]
  • Two stagecoaches, numbered 48 and 100, built in Charleville, Queensland in the late 19th century, are in the National Carriage Collection at the Cobb & Co Museum in Toowoomba.
  • Another stagecoach built in Charleville, Queensland, c1890 is preserved at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.[31]
  • An Australian-built stagecoach, possibly also built at the Cobb & Co factory in Charleville in the late 19th century, is in the collection of the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. Often described as the "Nowlands Coach," it was owned and operated by Nowlands Line of Coaches in the Liverpool Plains district.[32]
  • An Australian built stagecoach is in the Western Australian Museum at Kalgoorlie.
  • A locally built stagecoach is on public display in the main street of Hay, New South Wales.
  • A stagecoach built in Bathurst is on display in the Visitor Information Centre, Bathurst, New South Wales.
  • A stagecoach is on display at the Cambridge Downs Heritage Display Centre, Richmond, Queensland.

Other remembrances

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Cobb & Co Stables in Sale, Victoria
  • Scottish-Australian poet and bush balladeer Will H. Ogilvie (1869–1963) mentions Cobb & Co in his poem How the Fire Queen crossed the swamp, as well as the self-named poem, The lights of Cobb and Co..[33][34]
  • Lionel Long wrote and sang The Ballad of Cobb & Co, at one time available on LPs Australia — Our Land, Our Music[35] now on double CD: EMI – 8146732 or Axis CDAX 701475

Centenary festival

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The Cobb & Co Festival (Australia's Last Run) was held on 16–25 August 2024, celebrating 100 years since the last horse-drawn stagecoach service from Surat to Yuleba on 14 August 1924. An estimated 20,000 people attended the festival. It included a re-enactment of the last stagecoach journey from Surat to Yuleba using a replica Cobb & Co coach leading a cavalcade of more than 300 people travelling on horseback, buggies, wagons and bullocks.[37][38]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g Austin, K. A. (1977). A Pictorial History of Cobb & Co. Adelaide: Rigby Ltd. ISBN 9780727003164.
  2. ^ Bassett, Jan (1986). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Australian History. Melbourne: OUP. ISBN 0-19-554422-6.
  3. ^ "Old Coaching Days". The Argus. Melbourne: National Library of Australia. 10 June 1922. p. 7. Archived from the original on 26 August 2024. Retrieved 9 October 2012.
  4. ^ a b Hacker, D.R. (1999). Petries Bight: a Slice of Brisbane History. Bowen Hills, Queensland: Queensland Women's Historical Association Inc. pp. 19, 20. ISBN 0-9590271-8-1.
  5. ^ a b Priestley, Susan (1984). The Victorians: Making Their Mark. NSW: Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates. pp. 61–63. ISBN 0-949288-00-4.
  6. ^ "Cobb & Co. – an Australian transport icon". Archived from the original on 10 September 2016. Retrieved 21 September 2016. Retrieved 19 September 2016
  7. ^ Begg, Peter (6 March 2023). "Cobb & Co's golden era". Geelong Advertiser. p. 16. Archived from the original on 26 August 2024. Retrieved 6 March 2023.
  8. ^ This Wikipedia article incorporates CC BY 4.0 licensed text from: Christina Ealing-Godbold (20 January 2023). "The Lights of Cobb and Co: Coaching between Brisbane and Gympie in the 1860s". Blog. State Library of Queensland. Retrieved 28 January 2023.
  9. ^ Environmental Protection Agency (Queensland) (2002). Heritage Trails of the Queensland Outback. State of Queensland. p. 11. ISBN 0-7345-1040-3.
  10. ^ "COBB AND CO". The Queenslander. National Library of Australia. 1 September 1917. p. 3. Retrieved 10 May 2014.
  11. ^ Tranter, Deborah (1990). Cobb & Co: Coaching in Queensland. Queensland Museum, National Library of Australia. p. 13. ISBN 0-7242-4140-X.
  12. ^ "Cobb and Co". Balonne Beacon. Vol. 45, no. 1. Queensland, Australia. 6 January 1949. p. 4. Archived from the original on 26 August 2024. Retrieved 28 April 2021 – via National Library of Australia.
  13. ^ "In the Days of Cobb & Co". Sydney Mail. Vol. XIX, no. 473. New South Wales, Australia. 20 April 1921. p. 8. Archived from the original on 26 August 2024. Retrieved 28 April 2021 – via National Library of Australia.
  14. ^ "A Man's Duty is to Serve His Country". The Mail. Adelaide: National Library of Australia. 13 September 1913. p. 2 Section: Second Section. Retrieved 14 September 2012.
  15. ^ "On the tracks of Cobb & Co, Heritage Australia, March 1, 2006. Jeff Powell" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 March 2017. Retrieved 24 July 2020.
  16. ^ "Webpage updates of Wildride, The Rise and Fall of Cobb & Co, Sam Everingham". Archived from the original on 14 October 2016. Retrieved 21 September 2016.
  17. ^ "Cobb, Freeman (1830–1878)". Australian Dictionary of Biography: Freeman Cobb. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Archived from the original on 13 March 2016. Retrieved 21 September 2016.
  18. ^ "The Lights of Cobb and Co. by Henry Lawson". Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 15 March 2012.
  19. ^ Astbury, Leigh (1985). City Bushmen; the Heidelberg School and the Rural Mythology. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. p. 2. ISBN 0-19-554501-X.
  20. ^ Everingham, Sam (2007). Wild Ride: The Rise and Fall of Cobb & Co. Penguin Books. p. 292. ISBN 9780143011095.
  21. ^ Everingham (2007) pp. 63–65
  22. ^ "Tom Roberts "Bailed Up" Art Gallery of NSW". Archived from the original on 25 May 2022. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  23. ^ Everingham (2007) pp. 281–294.
  24. ^ "Cobb & Co mail and passenger coach, 1890, Powerhouse Museum, object description and notes". Archived from the original on 19 September 2016. Retrieved 25 August 2016.
  25. ^ "Museum Victoria, object description and notes". Archived from the original on 11 September 2015.
  26. ^ Tranter (1990) pps.54–57
  27. ^ Of the Australian built coaches, the Powerhouse Museum states "The coaches designed and built in Australia by Cobb & Co. at Bathurst and later Charleville altered the "U" shape of the Concord coach to a more rectangular shape. These were cheaper to build and featured large open windows more suitable to the Australian climate. The famous thoroughbrace suspension remained.""Production Notes Cobb & Co Coach". Archived from the original on 27 September 2016. Retrieved 26 September 2016.
  28. ^ For example, see Museum Victoria's "1880 coach Object Description". Archived from the original on 17 September 2016.
  29. ^ "Museums Victoria Collections, Concord Coach". Archived from the original on 2 June 2021. Retrieved 29 May 2021. Accessed 29 May 2021
  30. ^ "Museum Victoria, Australian built Cobb & Co Coach". Archived from the original on 26 August 2024. Retrieved 16 May 2022.
  31. ^ "Cobb & Co mail and passenger coach, 1890". Archived from the original on 19 September 2016. Retrieved 25 August 2016.
  32. ^ "National Museum of Australia Nowlands Mail Coach". Archived from the original on 9 May 2012. Retrieved 22 January 2012.
  33. ^ "How the Fire Queen Crossed the Swamp by William Ogilvie". Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 3 March 2008.
  34. ^ ""The lights of Cobb and Co."". The Daily Telegraph. No. 13, 962. New South Wales, Australia. 6 September 1924. p. 13. Archived from the original on 26 August 2024. Retrieved 28 April 2021 – via National Library of Australia.
  35. ^ McCormick, P.D. (Peter Dodds). Advance Australia fair; Paterson, A. B. (Andrew Barton), 1864–1941. Waltzing Matilda (1982), Australia, our land, our music : Australiana collection, EMI Australia, retrieved 8 June 2017{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  36. ^ "Whiplash – Classic Australian Television". Archived from the original on 24 October 2007. Retrieved 3 March 2008.
  37. ^ "Retracing the Historic Cobb & Co Mail Route". Cobb & Co Festival. Archived from the original on 1 August 2024. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
  38. ^ Jones, Iwan (26 August 2024). "Cobb & Co fest pulls big crowd". The Courier-Mail. p. 17.
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