Frank Whitney

Story

Frank Whitney, an only son, had grown up in Canada, on Montreal Island, at the confluence of the Siant Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers, and had run away to sea. In September 1852, when he was 26, his ship arrived in Hobsons Bay, Melbourne. Like his crewmates, Frank could not ignore the stirring tales of the riches that even a pauper could make in the Australian colonies, and for a time he tried his luck on the rough and tumble goldfields.

Frank was shy and self-effacing. He enjoyed a sing-along in the local bar, bringing a good voice and a jovial disposition to such occasions. He soon joined with four other immigrants in running a coach service out of Beechworth, Victoria, in competition with that of Cobb & Co. Frank Whitney befriended James Rutherford, an American immigrant, and the pair, together with eight others, purchased the legendary Cobb & Co transport business in Melbourne in the latter part of 1861 for a reputed 23,000 pounds.

When Cobb & Co expanded into New South Wales in 1862, Frank Whitney was one of five of the business partners to migrate north also, setting up and managing the firm’s first routes out of Orange, NSW. During this time attacks on their coaches were a common occurence.

Whitney married the Australian-born Isabella Leeds in November 1863. At the end of December 1864, Cobb & Co purchased their first massive property – the 185,000 acre “Buckiinguy” in the Macquarie Marshes on the frontiers of the settlement. It marked the beginning of a property empire that would outlast Cobb & Co’s coaching interests. Over the decades the company would expand from breeding horses for their coaching teams to raising cattle and sheep.

In 1867, Frank Whitney and his two remaining partners purchased Cunnamulla station on the Warrego River, in remote south-western Queensland, where they bred sheep. This purchase was followed by further huge stations, including Claverton in 1875. Income from wool, sheep and cattle sales, horse-breeding and pasture rental were to become an increasingly important income stream to the Cobb & Co empire.

By the 1870’s, Frank Whitney was earning the equivalent of more than $154,000 a year in personal dividends from Cobb & Co’s coaching business, and three times this amount from sheep, cattle and horse breeding.

Franbk and his wife would bring up a young family on the firm’s Buckiinguy property, before returning to Orange and later “Coombing Park”, Carcoar. The couple would lose three of their ten children in infancy. When she lost her first child, Bella Whitney was just twenty-four years of age.

In 1881, Cobb & Co acquired not only “Coombing Park” but also the title to every house, cottage and store in the neighbouring NSW central west town of Mandurama. Frank Whitney and his family moved into the “Coombing Park’ homestead.

Whitney played a key role in the development of NSW’s iron industry, investing ewith his partner many thousands of pounds in the purchase, development and maintenance of Lithgow’s largest iron mine – Estbank, and a nearby coalfield. Whitney would buy thousands of shares in six other copper and gold mines and also invested large amounts into a copper mine and its operations on Coombing Park.

On multiple occasions, with his partner ill, Cobb & Co’ New South Wales operations were left in the hands of Frank Whitney.

Frank Whitney died suddenly at Coombing Park, aged sixty-eight on 31 October 1894, beaten by a systemic infection from an abcess on the liver. He left his widow to bring up seven children while struggling for control of Cobb & Co in the face of worsening drought, a national economic depression and a business partner whose behaviour was increasingly erratic.

His widow Bella Whitney would successfully contest her husband’s will, necessitation a Private Members Bill in NSW Parliament – The Whitney Estate Act in 1902, to ensure she could keep Coombing Park and protect her familys future. Frank and Bella Whitney’s descendants continue to run this property.

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