The coach road east from the big smoke

The coach services did not all run the whole length of the Melbourne-Sale route. In the early 1870s there were two coaches a day between Brandy Creek and Melbourne.

These coaches passed each other at the Border Inn, at the bottom of the Berwick hill, where meals and refreshments were taken by all, including the horses.

The Sale coaches still used the Bush Inn, Bowman’s, on the Cardinia Creek.

It took a brave man – or woman – to ride the coaches as far as Sale. Leaving from the Albion Hotel in Bourke Street the run to Dandenong was not too bad, along a gravelled road after about 1855

It is important to understand that there were several coaching companies running on the Gippsland route, though it does seem that some of these called themselves Cobb and Co when they ought not have.

One result has been some confusion in our history, even schedules and fares, for which there must be many surviving records.

It does seem that at one stage the ‘real’ Cobb and Co., that is, the legal successor to Freeman Cobb and his syndicate, was at least partly owned by Gippslanders, in that Cyrus Hewitt was an American but George Watson held the IYU cattle run, round Pakenham.

They ran coaches to Ballarat, Beechworth and Bendigo, and into Gippsland, and it was the mail contracts they held which made the coaches really profitable. (The development of Gippsland’s postal system is interesting in itself, but that is for another time.)

The coach road into Gippsland was, broadly, what we now call the Old Sale Road, but there is some disagreement about the exact route of even that.

That isn’t surprising because these were not roads as we now know them. They moved as people found better creek crossings, or mobs of cattle chewed up the surface, or as trees fell across the way.

The coaches carried axes, crosscut saws, crowbars and ropes to clear fallen trees from the route, and on a few very steep descents the drivers would cut logs and tie them behind the coach to act a drag, or brake. I wonder what happened to the logs as the supply ran out at the top of the hill and grew at the bottom of the hill.

I know the Toongabbie-side descent down to Brunton’s Bridge at Walhalla was one such drop.

Sometimes, where a log was too thick to cut through in the available time ramps of smaller logs would be built each side and the coach would be pulled up and over, probably without the passengers inside.

It is almost impossible to imagine the discomfort of the passengers on the rough tracks of the time, and we can only wonder at the ingenuity of the drivers.

The first ‘through’ coaches seem to have operated from 1856, with the coaches running from the city down St Kilda Road and onto Dandenong Road.

The first change of horses was at Oakleigh, then again at Dandenong, Beaconsfield and Pakenham.

The longer first stage was because the road was better coming out from the city. From Dandenong on the horses worked harder and tired faster.

The coaching lines all worked to tight timetables, as far as possible, and that meant keeping the teams fresh and rested. Hence the term “stagecoach”.

The trip to Sale could take up to 36 hours and used 50 horses in relays.

The drivers changed three or four times as well because managing a fast run on an awful road was exhausting work,

At Beaconsfield the change was made at Bowman’s, now the Central Hotel, and at Pakenham it was at the Latrobe Inn, later Bourke’s Hotel and then the Princes Highway Hotel on the Toomuc Creek, where the highway crosses it today.

The route went on through Nar Nar Goon North to Bunyip (which was then well north of the Princes Highway. The route followed the old highway route to near Pakenham but then went south of the town, (according to one map, which I find difficult to understand) then north and over the ridge behind Mount Ararat before rejoining the ‘highway’ as far as Garfield North and then veering to the northeast. There was, of course, no highway there are at the time.

At Garfield North the “Pig and Whistle” Hotel was built in 1867 on Cannibal Creek, where the coach crossed, but I don’t think it was ever a coaching stables.

The Buneep Inn was on the Old Telegraph Road before the coaches ran regular services. When the Old Sale Road became the coaching route the “New Bunyip Hotel” was built on the river crossing.

I’ve been told that if you know where to look you can still see the wheel ruts in the stone of the Cannibal Creek bed.

From here it went more or less up the Old Telegraph Road and Jackson’s Track, to Crossover and thence to Brandy Creek. This was a very slow and horrendously uncomfortable section, with steep slopes and much ‘Corduroy’ road, where the track was ‘paved’ with logs laid across it.

You can imagine the jolting and bumping, and it must at times have been hard for the horses to maintain a good footing.

Brandy Creek was reached on the outbound journey at around midnight, so much of the corduroy was negotiated at night, with only the light of the candle-powered carriage lamps to guide the way.

The horses were changed for the run to Moe over a slightly better track. The coach came into Moe at about five o’clock in the morning after what must have been a very long night. The fresh horses from Moe might have gone all the way to Sale, but after the Haunted Hills they’d have been a tad weary – perhaps they changed again at Morwell or Rosedale.

The passengers were able to alight – probably very stiffly – in Sale at around midday after a run of roughly – very roughly – a day and a half.

By the mid-1870s there were two coaches daily each way between Melbourne and Brandy Creek, and with fewer changes of teams because the track was improving all the time. By 1880 the trip could take as little as 22 hours in summer, and about five more hours in winter.

The Brandy Creek coaches still stopped at the Border Hotel (or Inn) in Berwick for a meal and to change teams, while the Sale coaches changed at Beaconsfield at Bowman’s Hotel. This later became the Gippsland Hotel and is now the Central.

Some companies wanted to clear the Berwick Hill before resting, and others thought it best to tackle the hill with fresh horses. It was quite a barrier.

The railway had a very dramatic effect on the Sale road, which soon became the Old Sale Road. Warragul grew up and Brandy Creek went into a decline. Drouin West stopped its gentle growth and Drouin grew rapidly.

The settlements on the railway took over from the settlements on the coach road and the new road linking these new settlements eventually became the Princes Highway in about 1922. Perhaps surprisingly, it followed the railway quite closely almost all the way to Sale.

Register dogs and cats

Baw Baw Shire residents are set to be visited by Regi-Check ambassadors about pet registration.

The door knocking ambassadors will be assisting residents with pet registration needs, providing advice and information on registering domestic animals. The ambassadors will not be accepting payment or organising registrations on the spot, but advising residents of the process..

All cats and dogs over the age of three months must be registered with council and must be microchipped - as per state government registrations.

Residents are reminded to ensure pet registration details are also up to date with current contact details.

Baw Baw Shire residents who have not received their animal registration notice can contact council on 5624 2411.

To register a domestic animal visit the shire’s website.