His efforts were unavailing. With his horse he
was carried into deep water, from which they were rescued in an
exhausted condition. Not so with the team.

The bullocks were all drowned, and the waggon wrecked on the rocks.
Fortunately, being empty, only eight bullocks were yoked to the waggon,
but they were the pick of the team. This accident strengthened our
desire to dispose of the teams.

I sold Fitzmaurice's remaining team at Townsville at a satisfactory
figure, and my own two teams were sold on their arrival to one of the
drivers on terms.

The agreement was that we should provide him with loading from
Townsville to Winton at the rate of L30 per ton, until he had paid the
purchase money of it. This he did in a few trips.

These teams could not carry the whole of the goods I had purchased, so I
left an order with Clifton and Aplin to forward the remainder by
carriers as soon as they could despatch them. I engaged a suitable man
to assist Fitzmaurice, and we left with saddle and pack horses for
Winton, taking the shorter road _via_ Charters Towers.

This we left at Rockwood, to make a still shorter route across the Downs
from Culloden Station, over which the road party had ploughed a furrow
across to cut the head of Jessamine Creek, at the back of Oondooroo
Station.

In crossing the divide between the Landsborough and Diamantina waters,
we rode over virgin country which was infested with bush rats, and
numbers of tiger snakes gorged after eating them.

In one place, which was 25 miles from water, the snakes were so numerous
that we had a difficulty in getting our pack horses safely through them.
Yet it is argued that snakes are never very far from water.

In 1880, Cobb and Co. bought up a number of mail services throughout
Western Queensland, and the general regularity and convenience of their
coaches served to open up the country. Cobb and Co. carried out its
contracts under great difficulty in times of flood, but more frequently
of droughts, and their record is one of which the company and its
servants might well be proud. Their coaches are now practically of the
past, but the time was when Cobb and Co.'s name was a synonym for
efficiency and, when humanly possible, for punctuality. There were many
less enjoyable ways of realising life than by, say, to be leaving
Barcaldine for Aramac in the dark of an early morning on the box seat of
a coach behind a spanking team of greys, driven by a master hand with
t