Cobb and Co

Establishing the Company

The original company was established in Melbourne in 1853 at the height of the excitement created by the Victorian goldrushes, by four newly arrived North Americans - Freeman Cobb, John Murray Peck, James Swanton and John B. Lamber. Initially the company 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 coaches. By early 1854, the Company operated a daily service to Forest Creek and Bendigo, and soon afterwards, expanding the service to Geelong and Ballarat other goldfields.

In common with many operatives, Cobb & Co's horses were changed 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."

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 coaches used thorough-brace technology whereby thick straps of leather provided suspension to the body of the vehicle, thus providing the passenger with considerable comfort on the rough roads to the goldfields, by comparison to coaches with traditional steel-springs.

Under James Rutherford

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 to establish a stock and station agency. Passing through a number of owners, the company rose to greater prominence after 1861, when 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. By 1870, most of Victoria was serviced by a network of coach routes.

Expansion into NSW and Queensland

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. 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.

In 1865 the company again expanded, this time into Queensland. The first Cobb & Co service in Queensland was between Ipswich and Brisbane in 1865. Services were soon expanded into all parts of Queensland and this allowed for otherwise isolated communities to maintain regular contact with the rest of the world. In 1881 the firm became a company, with a capital of £50,000, running some 3000 horses a total of around 10,000 miles a week, the largest transport company in Queensland. A large coachworks was established at Charleville in the 1886, which turned out a variety of vehicles including over 120 coaches.

In 1871, the formal links between the Victorian Cobb & Co company (taken over by Robertson and Wagner) and Rutherford's New South Wales and Queensland operation were finally dissolved, but harmonious relations continued. 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.

Beyond Eastern Australia

Another company, also branded as Cobb & Co, 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. The business was taken over by John Hill & Co and years later was merged into Graves, Hill & Co.

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 companies bearing the name in New Zealand in 1863 and Japan in 1868.

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.

Cobb & Co in Folklore

Through the later nineteenth 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, 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 and Cobb & Co, 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."

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.

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."

Demise

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. 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, while the last coach ran in Victoria from Casterton to Mount Gambier in 1916. Australia's last horse-drawn stagecoach service was run by Cobb & Co from Yuleba to Surat in Queensland on August 14, 1924. With the rapid decline in wool prices in 1929, Cobb & Co Queensland finally went into liquidation. Gordon Studdert, a former employee, kept the Cobb & Co name as his Surat store business name until his death in 1955.

The 598 kilometre Cobb Highway in western New South Wales is named in commemoration of the company.

Preserved Coaches

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.

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

These include

Other Remembrances