Австралияның көшпенді пошта вагондары: Cobb & Co тарихы

Australian stagecoach company

Cobb & Co was the name used by many successful sometimes quite independent Australian coaching businesses. The first was established in 1853 by American Freeman Cobb and his partners. The name Cobb & Co 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 many 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. Cobb & Co has become an established part of Australian folklore commemorated in art, literature and on screen. Today the name is used by a number of Australian bus operators.

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. 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." 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.

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.

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. Services soon expanded into all parts of Queensland and otherwise isolated communities were able to maintain regular contact with the rest of the world. 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. A large coachworks was established at Charleville in 1886. It turned out a variety of vehicles including over 120 coaches. 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. A driver's wage was in the vicinity of £10 to £14 per week, with free meals.

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. 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. 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.

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, 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 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." 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."