Steven Ralph could not have predicted he'd become part of the Cobb & Co story.
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In 1988 he was the first person to reenact one of the company's coach routes, travelling from Melbourne to Yuleba and Surat in Queensland.
This August, he will be participating in the Cobb & Co Festival, which this year marks the centenary since the company's last horse-pulled mail service in Queensland.
When I went through the divorce, I hit the grog and spent a lot. By the time I was 30, I didn't even own a pair of boots on my feet.
- Stephen Ralph
The 71-year-old toolmaker by trade became part of its story by chance. In the early 1980s his marriage ended and he "sacked" himself from the company he was running.
"When I went through the divorce, I hit the grog and spent a lot. By the time I was 30, I didn't even own a pair of boots on my feet," he said.
It was about this time he randomly bought a horse and a cart, and saved enough money to buy a second-hand car.
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Meanwhile, his mate had spotted a busted old coach - unknowingly a Cobb & Co coach - but its owner resisted selling it.
But when that person's car blew up, he offered Steven the coach in exchange for his car. "I don't know why, but I said 'yes, I'll be in that'," Steven said.
With a lot of research and using woodwork skills he'd learned at a sawmill, he took two-and-a-half years to restore this coach.
"My friends were saying 'You're mad, you don't know anything about coaches. You put all the money you've saved up into this coach, and you can't drive a team of horses'."
He taught himself how to drive a team of horses, and in 1988, drove the coach from Melbourne to Longreach for the Stockman's Hall of Fame, and fundraised for the Royal Flying Doctor Service along the way.
As part of the journey, he successfully recreated the last mail run from Surat to Yuleba, learning more about Cobb & Co's story along the way. He did it again that year on the exact anniversary - August 14.
Today, he builds coaches and wheels, breaks in wild horses to work in teams, and is based on an original Cobb & Co property in the middle of the Sunshine Coast region's Glass House Mountains.
He's travelled about 15,000km in his Cobb & Co coach, provided coach and horses for more than 500 weddings and made more than 20,000 coach wheels.
He made a hearse coach for a Jackie Chan movie, and in 2001, featured in the recreation of Tom Roberts 1895 Bailed Up masterpiece - a landscape painting of bushrangers holding up a Cobb & Co mail coach.
According to the Queensland Museum, Cobb & Co. was a coaching company that connected Australia's bush settlements from the 1850s to the 1920s.
This year marks the centenary since Outback Queensland's last horse-drawn Cobb & Co mail coach.
The 10-day festival runs from Friday, August 16, to Sunday, August 25, in the Maranoa region, 500km west of Brisbane.
The family-friendly festival culminates on the last weekend with a re-creation of the last Cobb & Co mail run in Australia on the 76-kilometre Cobb & Co Way, a historic route that runs between the picturesque towns of Surat and Yuleba.
The festival kicks off with a long table dinner under the stars in Yuleba's main street, and will include a Heritage Trail Ride plus Cobb & Co coach rides. There's also a a gala ball event, live entertainment with an open-air concert, performances from the Crack Up Sisters, a bowls day, movie night, bullock rides, a horse art exhibition, markets and a mini-show day, bush poetry, clay shooting, vintage cars and more.
And in true form, mail will be collected from the tiny bush towns of Surat Post Office by a Cobb & Co coach from the Surat Cobb & Co Changing Station Museum.
For more details and a full festival program, visit: www.cobbandcofestival.com.au.
