The modern Cobb Highway follows a historic route that is part of the great network of stock routes that became colloquially known as The Long Paddock - a web of tracks and trails that linked the stock-breeding areas of the inland with the growing markets in the south. It also provided the only escape route from drought when the seasons failed. It still provides us with a link to times and landscapes that are long since altered.
Unlike the early travelers and drovers that traversed the often harsh and unforgiving plains of the Riverina and south-west New South Wales over the route now known as the Cobb Highway, we now see the world from the comfort of air-conditioned cars. We measure the trip in hours rather than days.
History of the Long Paddock
The project is designed in part to perpetuate the term the 'long paddock' which is part of the Australian vocabulary.
The 'Long Paddock' as defined in the Macquarie Encyclopedic Dictionary (1995: 552) is 'a stock route or open road, especially regarded as a place where people, too poor to own their own paddocks or pay for agistment, can graze their horses, cattle etc.'
The long paddock is also made use of during times of drought as stock owners seek feed for the animals that is not available in their own area.
The Cobb Highway is part of a very significant Travelling Stock Routes network that traverses New South Wales. The network covered an area, estimated in 1975, to be approximately 2.27 million ha or 2.83% of the State's land mass (Hibberd, J (ed)., Future of the Long Paddock, 1978).
The 'long paddock' is a well-known term to Australians who have a relationship with the pastoral industry or who have lived in rural Australia or who have seen drovers using the long paddock. With the decline of drovers and droving as part of rural activity, urban Australians and overseas people are probably not familiar with the term.