John Hill & Co., largest of Adelaide coach firms with up to 1,000 horses, overtaken by railways and motor cars by 1920

John Hill & Co. coaches in Franklin Street, Adelaide, during the final days of horse transport in 1903.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

John Hill & Co. was Australia’s largest and oldest surviving horse-coaching transport company by the end of the 19th Century, with 1000 horses used daily in its peak year.

John Hill began work in the goods department of his father’s business, Henry Hill & Co, that had a South Australian Railways contract. In 1866, John Hill was put in charge when the South Australian independent affiliate of Cobb & Co. bought the stagecoach business from 1844 of Willliam “Ben” Rounsevell.

Cobb & Co. sold its business, in 1873, to John Hill & Co., owned by Hill, Henry Fuller and George Mills. In 1882, the firm, based on Pirie Street, Adelaide, was restructured as John Hill & Co. Ltd as it expanded but it was always only a few years ahead of railways on the most profitable routes. Mount Pleasant and Willunga coaches were the last familiar horse-drawn vehicles on long routes.

Initially, the company ran Serpent buses between Adelaide and Kensington then took over Mr McDonald's Rose and Shamrock Scotch coaches traversing Glenelg Road (later Anzac Highway) where “the traffic became so great that 20 coaches per day were required to cope with it”. In the 1860s, coaches carried a postmaster-general mail guard, sitting at the top rear. This duty was dispensed as unnecessary in the 1870s.

One of the longest and most difficult of many lines was Adelaide to Port MacDonnell, about 350 miles. The longest northern route went to Yudnamatana, via Kapunda, Melrose and Nuccaleena, where a packhorse completed the final 100 miles of a 400-miles journey.

After seven years as a railways commissioner, in 1888, Hill returned to manage Hill & Co. and, with former competitor Henry Graves, founded Hill, Graves & Co., in 1911, owning a huge stone bulk store at Port Adelaide (later used by R. Mitchell & Co.), Australia’s largest stables in Pirie and Grenfell streets, and offices on North Terrace and in Gouger and George streets, Adelaide.

The company ceased trading in 1920 but with the business rationalised and transferred to H. Graves & Company.