BACK-BLOCKS COACH DRIVING

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1686, 22 June 1904, Page 37 (Supplement)

BACK-BLOCKS COACH DRIVING

Mr Will H. Ogilvie, an Australian, .mow living in Scotland, has an article in . “Macmillan's” for April on “The River Roads of Australia.” It makes mention or teamsters, shearers, travelling stock, camels, etc. The mail coach -driver is thus referred to —

“The mail coaches make a mighty effort to get througn m perilous (flood) times. Often the Iriver. quite alone, or with some timid passenger who is of no «se to him will flog his four horses into the flooded gullies, having iirst strapped his mail-bags on to the top of the coach and adjured his embarrassed passenger to ‘Sit tight!’ In a moment the horses are swimming and the big, lumfaering •oach in imminent danger of overturning but Mulga Teddie, or Warrego Mick, sits upright on his box playing the lash over his swimming leaders and •shouting to the plunging wheelers; and the chances are that his pluck is rewarded aiul his snorting team stand with scared bloodshot eyes and shaking, dripping flanks upon the bank, while his passenger swears by all the gods that if he escapes with his life on this occasion he will never again travel in fioodtime -on a river road. Few people know the -risks of the Western mail-driver. It is his boast and his pride to ‘come if he •oan,’ hut seldom or ever do the station or township people further up the river realise the awful dangers of that midnight drive. Yet when Mick’s coach looms up out of the darkness behind his glowing headlights, he has a cheery greeting for everyone, and it is hard to believe that perhaps half-a-dozen times that night he has stood face to face with death.”