Cobb & Co hired good horsemen. Known as ‘whips’, Cobb & Co drivers were legendary, both admired and respected. The men controlled a team of either five or seven horses, and did it day or night, on roads or forest tracks. On a number of occasions, passengers were saved by the driver’s quick reaction as horses shied or bolted.
Elderly Cobb & Co. drivers, by unknown photographer, 1946
Reproduced courtesy State Library Victoria
Ned Devine, or ‘Cabbage Tree Ned’, was notorious. Nicknamed for his hat, made from cabbage palm leaves, he trained as an ostler (stable hand) in Geelong and then drove for Cobb & Co, becoming known as the ‘King of the Highway’. He drove the ‘Leviathan’ coach, the largest in Australia, and by 1862 was earning £17 a week, a very high wage.
‘Driver of coach. Ned Devine’, by Henry Goldman, photographer, 1902
Reproduced courtesy State Library Victoria
‘Cobb & Cos. Leviathan coach, running between Ballarat & Geelong’, by Herman Deutsch, lithographer, c.1865
Reproduced courtesy State Library Victoria