Evening star., 1941-06-15
American Influence
in Australia
BIZ Frederic J. Hdskin.


once a lighthouse 600 miles from the
sea. Eighty years ago the lighthouse
keeper would put an oil lamp in the
frame and focus the beam that could
be seen 20 miles across the treeles5
plains of the Murrumbidgee River. This
land lighthouse was the iartheSt outpost
in the world of the great transport
enterprise.
No business firms name is more
honO1ed in Australia than that of Cobb
& Co When gold had resulted in the
doubling of Austfalia's population in
the 10 years of the 1850s, it was Freeman
Cobb, Californian, and another Ameri-
can, James Rutherford an Erie Canaler.
who ran the only transport system that
could function on the unmade roads Of
the Australian continent.
Freeman Cobb was one of the Cali
fornia diggers who went from the gold
rush there in 1849 to the gold rush in
Australia in 1851. He saw heavy coaches,
steel sprung, shake into pieces. He and
his two brothers took II crack drivers
and 10 coaches of the American type
from California to Melbourne. These
coaches were soon getting the cream
of the travel business at time when
miners would offer a silk hat full OF
ore for a 5OO-mile ride.
The Cobbs were the business kings Of
Australia. At the height Of their success,
they had 10000 horses on the road
every day and 10000 in reserve. Their
enterprise earned s5O0,0OO a year In mail
subsidies and millions in passenger and
freight revenues. Cobbs' drivers were
the celebrities Of the day Dressed in
white mOleskin, cabbage tree palm hat,
red shirt and high boots, these Yankee
drivers were the heroes of the bustling
age. 1t was only in 1912 that a Cobb
& Co. coach made its last run in Queens
land.
Thus the pioneering age of Australia
is almost a generation closer to modern
times than it is in America, and Ameri-
can old-timers would feel at home in
the frontier atmosphere of isolated towns
of Australia today. 1t is only, indeed,
in remote Australia that Americans have
nodded a civilization like their own.
Culturally Australia is not in the South
Seas, but in mid-Atlantic, with as many
influences coming from the United
States as from England.
Cobb g. Co were only one of long
list of honored American names in
Australian history. There were two
Californians Ben Chafey and his
brother George, who looked at the levee
banks of Australia's Mississippi. ths
Murray River, surveyed the sun -blistered
plains below it, and thought of their
native State before they got water to
it. George was one of the men who
made Californias Imperial Valley one
of the richest stretches of ground on
earth. He and his brother did the same
for the Murray Plains by bringing water
to 250000 acres of desert, a desert that
is nov the center of Australia S S20000,-
900 dried fruit export trade.
Another episode in the American
colonization of Australia goes back again
TO the gold days. Few Australians know
that their national flag was designed in
Union Jack quartered on a blue field
with the Southern Cross of five stars
with one added to symbolic the number
of states. The first time this flag was
flown it vas minus the Union Jack 1t
was raised over the wooden stakes of a
palisade where the gold miners of Bal.
larat took up arms against the troopers
70 u 81, -,r-l.t rrlz
flag was designed by a group of Cali
fornia gold diggers who fought beside
Irishmen, Australians and Englishmen
for responsible government But the
British have learned much about
handling young colonies since the days
of 1776. The authorities broke the
miners revolt, but the rebel miners
flag triumphed. 1t became the basis OF
the present independent flag of the
Commonwealth of Australia.
Two odd and picturesque figures
helped to round out this gallery Of
Americans who pioneered in Australia,
One was an evil scoundrel appropriately
called Bully Hayes. and the other was
known as King OMalley.
HAYES was a notable representative Of
that 18th century American tradition
Of frontier violence. The son of a
Mississippi barge owner, Hayes was a
huge man, with flaming hair and beard
and fog-horn voice, who sailed pirate
schooner from San Francisco to Aus
tralia. After a famboyant period Of
high living, he started trading between
Australia and the South Sea Islands.
The trade was mostly in human flesh,
and he ran Cargoes of Chinese and
islanders to work in the Queensland
cane fields. He became known as King
of the Blackbirders," blackbirder being
a kidnapper of native labor Australians
look hack on Hayes career with the
same sentimental regard that Ameri-
cans have for Jesse James, Billy the Kid
and other notable bandits of the past.
In every Australian census for 80
years there has appeared under the
heading of religious bodies an item.
Church Of the Rock-Bou Water
Lily" This was King OMalley,
bearded, picturesque super-salesman,
who early in his career took advantage
of the Australian law which granted free
land to organized religious bodies.
OMalley founded the Church of the
Rock-Bound Water Lily and received
land grant. His census entry re-
cognizes this opportunistic episode in
his youth, but there are no records of
any meetings of his church" being held
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