Exploring Australia’s history on the Cobb & Co Heritage Trail
After doing quite a few “trips with a purpose” (other than just going from point A to point B) during our four and a half years motorhoming overseas we looked for possibilities here in Australia.
It was while we were in Toowoomba for a short time after we arrived back from the US waiting for our new caravan to arrive, that we visited the Cobb & Co Museum.
We were immediately captivated by the number and extent of the routes that the stage coaches travelled within Australia. Maybe it would be possible to join routes together in the eastern states at least to make our travelling interesting as well as historically meaningful. By doing this it also included touching on the Murray-Darling River systems as well which is another interest of ours.
The aim of Cobb & Co from the outset in January 1854 was to provide reliable transportation for goods and passengers to and from the Victorian goldfields. Four enterprising young Americans, one of them named Freeman Cobb, were the founders of the company.
Cobb & Co stage coaches, plus it's many other endeavours, was to spread throughout NSW and southern central and far north Queensland. The company was to change hands and be reincarnated many, many, times until its last coach journey in southern Queensland in 1924. At its peak the company travelled 44,800 km each week and 6,000 of its 30,000 horses were harnessed every day.
In its long, fascinating and often times turbulent history fortunes were made and lost. The Cobb & Co company invested in coach and buggy building, horses, donkey breeding, general stores, a newspaper, real estate, gold, iron and copper mining, railway building, cattle and sheep farming and homesteads and finally in the 1920's, newfangled trucks and cars!
We will drive and walk on as many of the coach routes as we can, identify staging posts where possible and immerse ourselves in a little slice of Australia's transportation history including the railroad, agricultural history, conditions and rights for workers and the list continues... a time that spanned from 1854 to 1924.
Coaches carried the Royal Mail on almost all of their routes so their appearance in townships was always eagerly awaited. Sometimes other precious cargo was carried, for instance gold nuggets, and that as well as passengers personal affects became the target of bushrangers.
We started with the Cobb & Co Royal Mail routes in South East Queensland. Dating from 1827, Ipswich was originally a convict outstation for farming and quarrying limestone. It is Queensland’s oldest provincial city and the beginning of the Cobb & Co route to Toowoomba on the Darling Downs. Sadly no monument or plaque exists in Ipswich to commemorate the fact.
So we commenced retracing the Cobb & Co coach route with no actual reference point other than it was here in Ipswich… somewhere!
Have you travelled on the Cobb & Co Heritage Trail? Share your experience with us in the comments below.
To read more about Elizabeth and her husband’s moterhoming adventures, please visit their website here.
If you have a story to share please get in touch with melody@oversixty.com.au.
Related links:
Exploring Australia’s forgotten tourist capital
8 outback destinations every Aussie should visit