Australian Pictures, Drawn with Pen and PencilWilloughby, Howard
History
Australian Pictures, Drawn with Pen and Pencil
Willoughby, Howard
Australia -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Australia
Where there are no railways which the tourist can use, he may depend
upon being able to proceed by 'Cobb.' 'Cobb' is the general name for the
stage coach of the colonies, no matter who owns the vehicle, where it
runs, what are its dimensions. Any one who has not travelled by Cobb has
not properly 'done' Australia; and yet the fate of the black man and the
marsupial will, one plainly sees, be the fate of Cobb. He will be
improved out of existence, and thus another element of romance will fade
away. Our illustrations tell their own tale of moving incidents by field
and flood. Mr. Anthony Trollope wrote: 'A Victorian coach, with six or
perhaps seven or eight horses, in the darkness of the night, making its
way through a thickly timbered forest at the rate of nine miles an hour,
with the horses frequently up to their bellies in mud, with the wheels
running in and out of holes four or five feet deep, is a phenomenon
which I should like to have shown to some of those very neat mail-coach
drivers whom I used to know at home in the old days. I am sure that no
description would make any one of them believe that such feats of
driving were possible. I feel that nothing short of seeing it would have
made me believe it. The passengers inside are shaken ruthlessly, and are
horribly soiled by mud and dirt. Two sit upon the box outside, and
undergo lesser evils. By the courtesy shown to strangers in the colonies
I always got the box, and found myself fairly comfortable as soon as I
overcame the idea that I must infallibly be dashed against the next
gum-tree. I made many such journeys, and never suffered any serious
misfortune.'
[Illustration: STAGING SCENES.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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