AT 4.30am on 12 November 1868, passengers boarded the Cobb & Co. coach in front of the Royal Hotel, Queen Street Brisbane.
The mail bags were loaded and coach driver Hiram Barnes was ready to take charge of the five horses bound for Gympie.
The horses needed to be changed every 12 to 15 miles and the first stop was Tom Petrie’s ‘Murrumba’ homestead at North Pine (now Petrie).
The next was at the Caboolture River. The horses were left on the southern river bank while the coach was punted across the river. Five fresh horses were attached to the coach on the northern side of the river.
The third staging point was lunch (called ‘dinner’ in 1868) at Grigor’s Bankfoot House in the ‘Glass’ Mountains. A half mile to the south of the house, the coach driver would blow a bugle. This would alert Mrs Grigor to take the meat from the boiling pot. It would also alert the groom to take five fresh horses from their spelling paddock across the road and be ready for the changeover.
Approximately 40 minutes was allowed for the lunch break and horse change before the coach took off again, headed for the overnight stop at James Low’s ‘Mooroochie House’ at Yandina.
Today, the old ‘Glass’ Mountains horse spelling paddock and waterhole are owned by Steve Ralph and is where he has established the Australian Teamsters Hall of Fame. Steve, a Toolmaker, Wheelwright and devotee of Cobb & Co. coaches, has a restored original 14 passenger coach in his private museum.
Steve is also thinking BIG! He is presently in the process of building an exact replica of a Leviathan Coach which originally ran in Victoria in the 1850s, the largest 75 passenger coach ever used in Australia.
Steve plans to have his Leviathan Coach ready for the 100th anniversary of the last Cobb & Co. coach which ran in Australia on 14 August 1924 between Surat and Yuleba, Queensland. Anyone interested in following Steve’s progress in building the Leviathan can check his Facebook page, Australian Teamsters Hall of Fame P/L or Steve can be contacted on 0438 969 588.