Cobb and Co.

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31416, 8 July 1967, Page 4

Cobb and Co.

The Lights of Cobb and Co. By K. A. Austin. Rigby. 228 pp.

By the end of this book there cannot be much left to be said about coaches and the era of this form of pioneer transport The Cobb organisation, beginning in the gold diggings of Australia in 1854, provided a type of vehicle which was then regarded as revolutionary. The English coach with steel springs had failed under rough conditions, but Freeman Cobb used the American invented leather “thoroughbraces”—claimed to be the greatest American contribution to the progress of Australia. Cobb actually sold his business after only a few years of operations, but a tradition had been born and the name of Cobb and Co. was retained over the 70 years until the inland coach services, by then an anachronism. ceased in 1924. The legend of the name also carried to New Zealand and South Africa, where Cobb himself never journeyed. Evidently it was Charles Cole who began the Cobb system in the Otago goldfields, while for the greater part of the coaching era in Australia the dominant figure was not Cobb but James Rutherford.

Details of the book which will attract special interest concern the structure of vehicles, equipment, routes, mileage, costs and maintenance (£70,000 for horse feed in one particular year). The author knows how to conduct historical research and how to use the evidence of about 100 documents or books—including generous use of the earlier New Zealand-based writings of E. M. Lovell-Smith.