Cobb and Co - Services

Services

Coaches played an important part in Australia's transport and communication history. The first services began in 1854 between Melbourne and Bendigo. In 1861 Rutherford proposed extending the business into New South Wales, but his partners opposed the plan. They reversed the decision following news of the Lambing Flat (Young) gold rush. Rutherford moved ten coaches from the Castlemaine Depot in Victoria to Bathurst in 1862, and re-established his headquarters there. He transported passengers from the railway station at Penrith, all the way to the new goldfields. In 1865 on recommendations by Rutherford the company again expanded, this time to Queensland.

The first Cobb and Co service in Queensland was between Ipswich and Brisbane in 1865. The coach stage stops were at Goodna and at the Oxley hotel. This service ended when the railway link was completed in 1875. In 1871 Frederick Shaw joined the firm and established a large office, coach building factory and stables at Petrie Bight. The company continued to expand its services, reaching North Queensland in the 1880s. During this period services were expanded into South West Queensland as well. These coach services allowed for an otherwise isolated number of communities to maintain regular contact with the rest of the world.

An 1880s Concord model coach in the collection of the National Museum of Australia, in Canberra, known as the Nowland’s mail coach, was used to transport mail and passengers in northern New South Wales, Australia. This coach is likely to have been made by the Cobb & Co coachworks either at their Charleville, Queensland or Bathurst, New South Wales, NSW factory. It was originally owned by the Nowland family and used on their network of mail and passenger services in the Liverpool Plains area in the 1880s.

This coach also has a rich connection to the silver screen, featuring in the 1920 silent film The Man from Kangaroo and the 1957 production of Robbery Under Arms, based on the Rolf Boldrewood novel of the same name.

The Man from Kangaroo was shot near the coach's original home around Gunnedah, and further south in Kangaroo Valley. The Man from Kangaroo is held in the National Film and Sound Archives of Australia collection. Robbery Under Arms was shot around Bourke in New South Wales and Wilpena Pound in South Australia.

In Robbery Under Arms the coach features in a hold-up scene. It is first glimpsed barrelling down an inland highway before being bailed up by the fictional bushranger Captain Starlight and his gang.

The Nowland's mail coach was acquired by the National Museum of Australia in 1980. It was purchased from the Royal Australian Historical Society with another coach, a wooden horse-drawn landau known as the Ranken coach.