This is no masterpiece but it is coming from so far away both in space and time that for its time it was a marvelous gem. The episodes are short, just under 30 minutes each. There are two main characters: a major main one, Christopher Cobb, and his main chief driver Dan Ledward. It is supposed to be a real retrospective of that adventure after the 1851 gold rush in Australia. Cobb was a Boston-born Texan (if we can say so) who had experienced the Californian gold rush in 1849. He had to build "roads" that rather were flattened up trails and train people to drive the stagecoaches and then guarantee security against natural odds and bush rangers, the Australian highwaymen of the time. Do not expect great adventure and action. Just nice episodes here and there with bank robberies, ambushes on the road, murders, and all kinds of grotesque people attracted by the gold rush and the wilderness. The adventure came to an end when the telegraph was installed since communication could be in the real time of this invention. But transporting goods and people had still to use stagecoaches, waiting for trains to come still of course.The nicest moments of this series are both the opening and closing credit sequences with song and kangaroos, jumping and leaping everywhere, a few koala bears and some other animals from the area, all more or less dangerous like water snakes, crocodiles or alligators, and sharks. Birds are also funny though they are mostly signals of something happening in the brush. We could of course mention the Aborigines who are shown within a rather narrow cliché though not systematically hostile. But they are only men. No women and no children. I guess the children were already taken away to be educated in white colonial school in the 1950s. They are shown as very black, only dressed with feathers and leaves, though they wear briefs under the feathers, I guess for decency. They are always painted up and they constantly dance and chant with boomerangs and other stone- age weapons. Some are integrated with pants and shirts, and some whites are manipulating them to get some hostility from them to slow down some project or to create some fear in order for them whites to make a profit out of it.The series is wrapped up in a rather fast and funny ending. Christopher Cobb falls in love with a Parisian artist invited by the bandit Quicksilver to paint his house before he gives away his loot and goes back to England as a respectable person to rejoin his son who is educated there. It is obvious Christopher Cobb has new cats to take care of with this Woman who has to go back to France anyway. I guess Christopher Cobb will have to move to Paris too and he could try to install some underground stagecoach system in this city for both local rats and local people (people could be rats and rats people, such things are never very clear in Paris). He could call that transportation system the Métro(politain). I am pretty sure this invention could work, even today: nostalgia always has it strong in the minds of Parisian people and elites.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

I loved this show, and it turned me on to Australia at a very young age. This was my first exposure to the trademark "Aussie" hat (aka "Akubra") with one side of the brim up, attached to the side of the crown. In Peter Graves' character's case, I believe it was some kind of animal tooth that held it in place.I pestered my mom and dad for YEARS to find me one, and finally we found a rough approximation in an Army surplus store, with a chain that would clip one side of the brim to the side of the crown. I wore it every day, and even after I got older I would wear it on camping trips.I too wish at least one or two episodes had survived. I'm sure it would be terribly dated, but I think it would be fantastic.

This was one of my favourite shows as a kid, loved stories of the Cobb & Co coach line and especially our bushrangers Most of our bushrangers were deemed heroic and the law was the bad guys Loved the theme song too - it is one of the few very show showing how Australia was back in those early days. I know that myself and my friends use to play at being bushrangers - we had some wonderfully colorful characters. Peter Graves gives a great portrayal of a coach driver of the era. Must admit though it was odd seeing him in Whiplash and then later on in the afternoon in an American series called Fury. I was unaware that it was shown in the US but nice to know that other nationalites liked it too - it is a shame that it did not take off.

A stunning theme song that sticks in the mind even after all these years but sadly the series never clicked. The novel notion of an American in the Australian "Old West" setting up a stage line could not compete with real Westerns. Peter Graves was his reliable self. Too bad this came across as a cheapie.