THE FRONT BOOT

The 100-year Cobb & Co anniversary celebrations culminated in outback Queensland in late August with a festival of thousands of people . These costumed travellers were there to welcome the last leg of a two-day re-enactment of the final Cobb & Co mail run ever undertaken in Australia , from Surat to Yuleba , Qld , 500km west of Brisbane .

The historic re-enactment involved a 76km trip broken into seven legs of 10-12km undertaken by a replica Cobb & Co coach and teams of five specially trained horses on the Cobb & Co Way .

The coach followed a spectacular cavalcade of more than 300 on horseback , in buggies and on wagon and bullocks on the dusty outback roadway to the Yuleba Post Office .

The festival activities included camel-drawn Cobb & Co coach rides and bullock team rides , parades with draught horses , live music , markets and more .

In celebration of the Cobb & Co festival ’ s 100th anniversary , Queensland Rail , in collaboration with the Australian Railway Historical Society , also ran a heritage steam train to transport festival-goers – the first time in nearly 10 years a steam train had run past Toowoomba .

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