Cobb & Co Heritage Trail Bathurst to Bourke
By Diane de St Hilaire Simmonds
Available from:
info@mudgeehistory.com.au
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The Gold Rush and Cobb & Co P.2
Road. Gipsy Brown was taken by Mudgee police in the Keen’s Swamp area and Lambert was captured near Clandulla in 1840. Lambert worked out of a cave in a gorge at Mount Vincent, near Ilford. The coach was held up at Stony Pinch, Windamere Dam area, by bushrangers.
On the Mudgee, Eurunderee, Home Rule and Gulgong run, Cobb & Co were allowed 120 pounds per annum extra to convey the mails on from Gulgong to Mudgee immediately after they arrived at Gulgong, by a buggy or other light vehicle. This run was transferred from John Randell in 1883 to Cobb & Co.
The coach once called into the property ‘Home Rule’ bought off the Rev EP Lowe’s ‘Old Gulgong’. There is nothing there now, everything burnt down, but the coach went on the main road, round and out round the mountain to Muswellbrook. There are marks on the rocks where the coaches went through. There are also other properties in the Mudgee region that still have either coach tracks across them, or remains of stables, or changing stations. One such place is believed to be at Uarbry, Blue Springs Road Gulgong, John Swords also tells us there was another coaching stop at the Lagoons Inn, now the property of Mal Swords. Traditions holds that the coach stop was for the Mudgee Maitland and Mudgee Cassilis runs. (See photos on left: top is the ruins of the bakers oven, lower is the ruins of the old stable).
And, of course, other old changing stations still survive on the Lue Road, just out of Mudgee; on the Wellington Road turnoff from the Gulgong Road; at McDonald’s Creek, home of the Paton family; at Appletree Flat opposite the cemetery; on the Sofala turnoff at Ilford on the Castlereagh Highway, at the bottom of Cherry Tree Hill on the Sydney Road, at Hargraves; at the Court House at Cassilis and many other locations, RylstoneCoach sheds and stables also stood along the present Rylstone Anglican Church boundary where the Rylstone Hotel once stood with three other buildings in the main street, opposite the old Post Office. Passengers stayed overnight from the coach and according to their ranking, were classed first or second grading in bedrooms, dining rooms etc.
The Globe Hotel in Rylstone was bought by a trooper, Thomas Owen, who worked in the saddler trade until 1880.
The blacksmith’s shop was one of the three buildings on the main street, plus an inn, and a Gunyah.
The inn stayed on the site until it was demolished in 1947 and the gunyah became the site of the third flour mill, now The Cafe. Denison TownThe Denison Town coach changing station is still standing on the Coolah Road, just up from the Coolah turnoff. Previous | Content | Next |
Reedy Creek Inn, once a Cobb & Co stop, now residing in the Gulgong Pioneeers Museum.
A close up of the old wood horse trough now standing outside the Reedy Creek Inn in the Gulgong Pioneers Museum.
Photo Top left:
Copy of an historic photograph taken in Gulgong in 1872, courtesy of David Rutherford of the famous Cobb & Co Rutherford family. The photo shows miners, a police officer and a publican on the corner of Herbert and Mayne Streets waiting for the Cobb & Co coach to leave.
The cattle duffer Starlight's family graveyard between Rylstone and Ilford.
The Bushranger Thunderbolt's cave near Bylong. There is still evidence of someone living in this cave from long ago.
Reader's Note:After reading your site I thought you may be interested to know that a ancestor of mine did raise these horses for the British Army. He was Thomas Graham Wilson from Burrundulla ( who eventually died from a horse fall).
His grand daughter was a successful writer, Ella McFadyen. She wrote Thunderbolt's Horse partly based on her grandfather who actually purchased one of the bushranger's horses. She also writes, " I can just remember an old man, Whose hand shot Thunderbolt dead".
Amazing times.
regards
Jenny Garman
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