Corduroy Road Ruin Historic Site is a disused road that forms part of a heritage-listed former stagecoach route in the rural locality of Curban, Gilgandra Shire, New South Wales, Australia. Built between 1850 and 1923. It is also known as Cobb & Co route. The property is owned by Gilgandra Shire Council. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 5 October 2018.
History Settlement of the Curban area The 1820s and 1830s in New South Wales were characterised by a push for new grazing lands beyond the Limit of Location established by Governor Darling. This was largely driven by growth in the colonial economy and increasing trade with Britain. The discovery of easy passes over the Liverpool Ranges opened paths for squatters to move mobs of cattle and sheep into the rich Liverpool Plains. As these groups were moving out of the Hunter Valley others were moving livestock northwest from the Lithgow and Bathurst regions to establish runs along the Castlereagh River.
Andrew Brown of Cooerwull, Bowenfels (at the western end of the Lithgow valley) is credited to be the first European to squat on the Castlereagh River which flows past Curban. Brown spent the years around 1830 scouting runs for himself and his employer, James Walker of Wallerawong. Around the same time squatters such as the Cox and Rouse brothers and representatives of William Lawson's extended family were moving into the region from the east and south. Brown and Walker's sheep were driven to their properties at Bowenfels and Wallerawang for shearing each year. It was easier in those times to move living animals than dead loads of wool. When Charles Darwin visited Walker's Wallerawong in 1836 he noted that: The sheep were some 15,000 in number, of which the greater part was feeding under the care of different shepherds, on unoccupied ground, at the distance of more than a hundred miles, and beyond the limits of the colony.
The general pattern of these early incursions into the region appears to have involved the identification of suitable pastures and the movement of cattle or sheep into the areas identified. Convict labourers, indentured servants or employees were left in small groups in isolated situations to tend the herds and flocks. By all accounts they generally lived in miserable circumstances deprived of decent food and in constant fear of attacks by Gamilaraay or Wiradjuri groups, or bushrangers who had moved beyond the reach of the law. During the 1830s cattle driven out from Mendooran were being departures along the Castlereagh River.
Governor Brisbane's mounted police kept some order, although often squatters and their servants often took the law into their own hands. A few punitive military expeditions had been mounted on the fringes of the region to establish the rule of British law. These had included Morisset's expedition against the Wiradjuri around Mudgee and the upper Macquarie in 1824 and Nunn's 1836 military expedition to the Gwydir and Namoi.
Policing of the frontier was taken over in the 1830s by the feared and hated Border Police. In 1836 Governor Bourke established regulations, which legalised squatting beyond the limits of the Nineteen Counties. The ensuing period, which coincided with the height of the economic boom of the 1830s, saw the consolidation of many landholdings around the Castlereagh. By 1836/37 licences were issued for stations along the river in the vicinity of the present-day Gilgandra, Curban, Armatree and Gulargambone. Richard Rouse at Mundooran, Thomas Perrie at Breelong, James Bennett at Bearbong and Curban, Lowes at Carlganda and Yalcogreen, John Hall at Calingoingong were all early settlers.
Another early pioneer to the area was Andrew Brown of Cooerwull, Bowenfels (at the western end of the Lithgow valley) who is thought to be the first European to squat on the Castlereagh River. In the 1830s Andrew Brown was in this area looking for land for both himself and his employer, James Walker of Wallerawong eventually establishing stations known as Yarragrin, Gundy, Bidden, Mogie Melon, Wallumburawang, Tooraweenah and Nullen. Records indicate that John Jude and John Hall were the first people to hold licences to departure stock on the Castlereagh River downstream from Mendooran. They lodged their application for a licence on 31 December 1836 with the description "Carlingangong North Western beyond Wellington Valley". By 30 September 1839 John Jude acquired a licence for the adjoining area called Armatree.
Accounts of the murder of dairyman Abraham Meers at John Hall's Carlingoengoen Station on 6 August 1839 confirms that Hall's holdings were well established by this time. When John Jude died in 1866 he left Armatree, New Armatree and Willancorah to his son Page Otto Jude. "Page Jude had already acquired Illumurgalia West and Illumurgalia East from Andrew Brown of Cooewull in 1864". Alexander McGregor had taken up Merrigal on the western side of the Castlereagh in 1845. His grandsons "held large tracts of land from Armatree to Collie".
Transport routes and Cobb & Co. Transport routes linking European settlements in the region generally followed watercourses and a number of tracks were developed along both sides of the Castlereagh River. One of the main connections between Gilgandra and the outside world followed the Castlereagh River from Mendooran. This route was followed by wool drays on their way to the coast. It passed through Eringanerin and traversed the eastern side of the river to Coonamble. In the Armatree (Curban) district this road traversed the western boundary of Page Jude's Illumurgalia East Run.
As Cobb & Co expanded their coaching routes across New South Wales the company obtained a growing number of mail contracts. Between 1874 and 1880 they established twice-weekly mail services linking Gilgandra to Dubbo and a service from Gulgong to Gilgandra via Cobbora and Mendooran then on to Curban, Gulargambone and Coonamble. The Coonamble service was later increased to three days per week. Coach drivers included James Brown, Paddy Murray and William Walden. The road carrying the coach route was identified on the map of the Parish of Callangoan prepared by the Department of Lands in 1880. Cobb and Co services along the East Coonamble road through Curban ceased in 1898, but others continued the coach run, including Bill Rowley, Adam Nolan, and one of the last official mail coach services in the region was on this road and was run by W. Hogan until 1923.
Travelling the coach routes
An account of the NSW Minister for Public Works, James Henry Young's visit to the region in September 1897, described the difficulties faced by those traversing the black soil plains along the Castlereagh: By the time the travellers had made a little further progress towards Dubbo it was sunset -which, by the way, is generally a sight worth seeing on the plains to the west - and it was soon apparent that a lively, or at least a dreary, time was in store. The rains which had fallen in the morning lay in large pools stretching out in all directions as far as, in the rapidly approaching night, the eyes could reach. But the driver of an inland coach has a way of picking out his road which seems almost mysterious. He drives a little distance from it at times, picks out a new track, dodges between trees whose proximity to one another is just sufficient to allow the wheels of his coach to pass between, and he only rarely lodges his passengers in one of those slushy, spongy patches which country people refer to indifferently as "bog," but which give rise to unpleasant apprehensions in the minds of benighted travellers accustomed to city thoroughfares. "Are ye bogged?" sang out the trooper, as the Ministerial coach sank nearly up to the axles in one of these treacherous portions of the NSW Government road. "I'll git out all right," the driver replied; and he shouted to his struggling team, and swung round his whip with a succession of sharp cracks until the coach was dragged to a place of comparative safety. It was in endeavouring to avoid a bog and pass between soma shrubbery that one of the front wheels of the coach struck a tree which could not be discerned in the darkness. The outlook was not reassuring. Creeks, rivers, and pools of stagnant water ahead were reported to those who inundated the driver with queries as to "How long will it last?" "When shall we get there?" 'Won't we miss the Sydney train?" The only assurance that was forthcoming was that the party would " Git there fust". Armatree Plains were reached in due course, and were crossed at a pretty uniform speed of one mile an hour.
The country here differs in configuration but little from the surrounding plains, and its designation is only comprehensible as specifying a part of the whole. Several times whilst crossing little streams a couple of feet in depth it seemed that the horses were going to fail, but the rough experience of travellers did not embrace so unromantic an episode. When the party had to leave the coach in times of difficulty there was sufficient dry land within access to allow of the swampy patches to be avoided.
Corduroy Roads While noting the "slushy, spongy patches" on the coach route between Gulargambone and Dubbo (which includes Curban) the above newspaper report noted that the geology of the region, and unavailability of stone made the cost of constructing macadamised roads prohibitive. The only practical method of stabilising boggy sections of road was considered to be corduroy. Corduroy was a practical solution as large quantities of cypress logs were available for this purpose. The cost of Corduroy Roads was estimated to be A£800 per mile.
It was common practice to lay sections of corduroy road in the Central West to provide an all-weather surface on boggy sections of the black soil plains, also over very sandy sections of road, and creek or river crossings. Corduroy involved the placement of small cut logs or saplings side by side across the direction of travel to provide a relatively stable, if rather bumpy, surface for the mail coaches. In his memoir of pastoral work in western New South Wales Duke Tritton recounted an uncomfortable journey across a section of corduroy road located east of the Bourbah Hotel. He noted that four or five miles on from the hotel "the road ran through a cypress pine forest. It was like driving through a tunnel with the tops of the trees meeting overhead." The road through the forest had been corduroyed with cypress logs about nine inches in diameter to stabilise a very sandy section. 'Had the upper side been squared, it would have made a good job, but the logs had been left round and it made the surface incredibly rough. The bump, bump, bump, was hard on the nerves and it was a great relief when we bumped for the last time. The horses could travel only at a slow walk and it took over an hour to negotiate the four miles".Tritton 1964:87
A description of travelling on a corduroy road near Wyong was obtained in an oral history interview in 2010 "when I was a kid I can remember bouncing over it in the sulky cart to town. My father was a bullocky teamster with a wagon and when they used to take the logs and that to Wyong on the big wagons they used to bog in that feature where they put those logs in".Umwelt 2010
Corduroy roads are a technique that have been used in Europe since Roman times, and into the 20th century, most notably during WWI and WWII. Corduroy roads have their origin in the European Neolithic wooden trackways that were laid down on the surface of bogs to enable people to walk across, some of which are 4,600 years old.Casparie & Moloney 1994
The Corduroy Road Curban Historic Site near Curban