Celebrating 100 years ...
"The Last Coach ... on August 14, the last horse-coach trip of the
world-renowned firm of Cobb and Co. ​has been run
from Surat to Yeulba ..."  
​(The Last Coach, 5 Sep 1924, p.16)
* * * * * 
Surat-Yuleba Cobb and Co. Festival, ​16-26 August 2024

Congratulations to all organisers and participants.
​An event to be remembered!
​
‘Along the Western Run of Cobb & Co’.  Talk ... 
Hazel Johnson—author, farmer, teacher, lover of history and proud Australian—join her on the  ‘box seat’ as she highlights stories of the Cobb and Co pioneers and the 'unyielding courage, determination and resilience' that built modern Australia. Journey through floods, coach accidents, bail-ups by bushrangers and the like … follow a brief history of the firm that ran under the style of ‘Cobb and Co.’  ...

Talk shared on Cobb and Co. Facebook Group
​
Professor Nimmo, Her Excellency the Honourable Dr Jeannette Young AC PSM, Governor of Queensland, and Hazel Johnson, at Hazel's 'Along the Western Run of Cobb & Co.' Talk, Cobb & Co Changing Station, Surat, 23 August 2024
Along the tracks of Cobb and Co. - Back to the Beginning 
(Book 4: Victoria & the Goldfields)
Edition 1 
​​$29.95
Postage & handling: One book $12;  Book Series (5 books) $24.50
​Gift wrapping: $4.95
​
Travel through 'Melbourne the Marvellous' and beyond, as you take a look at Victoria during the gold rush years. Explore who were the Cobb and Co. coaching proprietors, and where the coaching lines ran across Victoria, 1854 to 1920 ... Take a longer stop at Glenrowan, Victoria. Bob Grover, a Cobb and Co. driver, said "I drove in the Kelly country, but I was never stuck up, because I always carried a bottle of brandy in the boot. More than once or twice I’ve swung round a bend to see Ned Kelly himself with his hand up to stop me. All he wanted was a stiff nip, and he always got it from me, and we’d swap a word or two." The demise of bushrangers Edward & Daniel Kelly, Stephen Hart and Joseph Byrne—The Kelly Gang—occurred during the encounter at Glenrown in 1880, which resulted in the capture of Ned Kelly. Upon hanging, Ned Kelly "merely said, Ah, well, I suppose it has come to this." Read more in Book 4 ...
​Along the tracks of Cobb and Co. - The New South Wales Headquarters
​(Book 3: In & Around Bathurst)
Edition 2 
​​$26.95
​Postage & handling: One book $12;  Book Series (5 books) $24.50                
Gift wrapping: $4.95

The romance of road-coaching in Australia ... "It abounds with incident and accident by flood and fell, by field and forest. Over miles of drought-stricken plains, through leagues of raging bush-fires, amid incessant rains and through the raging waters of swollen rivers, Cobb's coaches plunged along, beneath blazing sun-heat and in blinding storm, in heat and in cold, in midnight darkness and the crash of elemental war. The three great lamps have glowed in the blackest night as beacons of hope and messengers of civilisation, Cobb's mailcoach typifying a red link between the active world of affairs and the expatriated dwellers of the far Out-back." ... On this journey, take a long stop at ‘Abercrombie House’, an Australian heritage treasure in Bathurst, N.S.W. The property was established by Major-General William Stewart in the 1820s, and more recently, home of the Morgan Family for over half a century. In the roaring days, the Cobb and Co. coaches travelled on the west and southwest roads that went straight through the middle of this property. Read more in Book 3 ...
Along the tracks of Cobb and Co. - The Western Run
(Book 2: Brisbane, Toowoomba, Roma & Charleville)
Edition 2 
​​$26.95
Postage & handling: One book $12;  Book Series (5 books) $24.50
​Gift wrapping: $4.95

"Who among all our friends and readers is not familiar with that most ubiquitous colonial institution, ‘Cobb and Co.'s coach,’ a mode of travelling whose singularities and excellences of tone, form, and color constitute one of the most vividly impressing pictures of Australia travel? Can anything be imagined more fascinating in its way than the resounding approach of this pioneer of civilisation? The light tenor and alto rattle of chain and harness, the creaking and straining of steel-strung timbers, with the beat of equine footfalls for a bass, the accompaniment of the fluttering of waterproof curtains, and the swish and sharp crack of whip, all blend to the sympathetic ear into a natural music—an audible exponent of the poetry of motion." ... "At a place called Miles we stopped for dinner ... Roma was reached at 10.30 p.m., and, as I was informed, a hotel bearing the royal cognomen of the Queen’s Arms was the best, I drove up in their conveyance and was accommodated with a ‘shakedown,’ the beds all being bespoke. I also became acquainted with the cockroaches which inhabit this locality. They are not as large as those in Brisbane, where I have mistaken them for mice, but they are more numerous and, I think, more intelligent, for on one occasion I saw them playing on the piano. Roma may most appropriately be called a ‘wooden town.’ I do not remember seeing a brick or stone structure about it. On the outskirts may be seen houses built on a style of architecture now discarded in town, the building material chiefly used consisting of logs, bark, and old tin." ... On this journey, take a longer stop in and around Roma. At 'The Big Rig' is the old slab hut that once stood on Clark’s Creek, ‘Lenroy’, Hodgson, Qld. Read more in Book 2​ ...​
​Along the tracks of Cobb and Co. - The Great Northern Road 
​(Book 1: Tenterfield to Warwick)
Edition 2 ​​
​$26.95
​Postage & handling: One book $12; Book Series (5 Books) $24.50
​Gift wrapping: $4.95

"The old stage coach has been pushed off the roads by the motor, but the ghosts of the romantic past will ever linger.” ... From the horse and sulky, or the stage coach and galloping horses, to mail planes, to the motor buggy, journey through a broad spectrum of change, along some of the tracks of Cobb and Co. ... Take a longer stop at Liston—with its echoes of cracking whips and cricket games from the good old days—where the Cobb and Co. Coach & Collectables Museum is located ... Just up the road "between Bookookoorara and Wilson’s Downfall, on the eastern side of the road, there is a building. Until a few years ago this was occupied by Mr. Jack Dillion, well-known drover. The people … had often showed kindness to him [Thunderbolt the bushranger] … somewhere he had found a young fruit tree and brought it to them … The large pear tree … is known as Thunderbolt’s Tree." Read more in Book 1 ​...
Along the tracks of Cobb and Co. - Cobb's Coach Drivers 
Edition 2
​​$29.95
As you journey through stories of bushrangers, floods, coach accidents, amusing anecdotes and the like, many Cobb and Co. coach drivers are identified (over 800 from across Australia)
​Postage & handling: One book $12;  Book Series (5 books) $24.50
​Gift wrapping: $4.95

“Into the mists of the past have gone the days of Cobb and Co.’s coaches, with their daring drivers who could ‘spin’ many a thrilling story of the days when ‘the world was wide’.” ...  "These old coach drivers were hardy men. Summed up in the words of an old driver of 82 years, their elixir of life was plenty of fresh air. Except on a few occasions, we were early to bed, he explained, and at 5.30 a.m. we were up, breakfasted, and ready to face another day of anything up to 60 miles. Pay was small in those days, and the staple meal of mutton and damper was so scarce that we never suffered from indigestion. We smoked vile black tobacco sometimes, though people said it would kill us, and had a drink occasionally. There was nothing better, though, than the fresh bush air and the scent of the old gum trees!" ... Remembering the romantic and exciting story of Cobb & Co. is the Cobb+Co Museum, Toowoomba. Read more in Cobb's Coach Drivers ...
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​Book sales fund further research.
​Thank you for your interest in letting Australian history 'speak for itself' ...   
Contributions and the sharing of personal family stories/photos welcome.

Public Group - 'Cobb and Co.'

 Acknowledgement of Country
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which the Cobb and Co. stage coaches travelled.
We pay our respect to Elders past, present and emerging, and,
​extend our deep respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.