Trans-Australian Telegraph Line
The Australian Overland Telegraph Line (Engl. Australian Overland Telegraph Line ) was a 3200 km long telegraph line , the 1872 Port Augusta in South Australia to Darwin at the Australian association north coast and from here with undersea cables for the first time telegraphic connection according to the Dutch East Indies ( Indonesia ) and Europe made possible.
planning
Until the point in time when the line went into operation, messages between the Australian colonies and the British mainland could - at least in parts - only be transmitted by ship mail. So the news traveled for weeks, if not months. This created an immense need for accelerated communication, which would also have been technically available with the telegraph . What was missing was the appropriate line.
From 1855 onwards, different routes for a connection with Europe were discussed:
- from Ceylon to Albany in Western Australia ;
- from Java to Darwin and from here either
- to Burketown in northwest Queensland or
- through the inner Australian desert to Adelaide in South Australia.
The dispute between the Australian colonies over the course of the line was severe. The government of Victoria expected the telegraph line, should it end in Adelaide - and thus ultimately in its own capital, Melbourne - an economic impetus and therefore promoted the company. First, she funded the Burke and Wills Expedition of 1860, led by Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills , to find out which route was technically possible. The expedition explored the terrain by traversing interior Australia from Menindee to the Gulf of Carpentaria . On the way back, however, the expedition leaders died from exhaustion. The government then offered £ 2,000 to anyone who found a viable route between South Australia and Darwin.
John McDouall Stuart also intended to cross the continent from the Flinders Ranges , which he succeeded in the sixth attempt in 1862. He had the project of a transcontinental telegraph line in mind, so he made notes on the best ways to lead it across rivers, water reservoirs and ways to win telegraph poles. On July 24, 1862, he reached the Australian north coast in Chambers Bay , which he named after his client and sponsor .
Armed with this knowledge, the Parliament of South Australia approved the construction of a telegraph line from Adelaide to Port Augusta, 300 kilometers north in 1865. Since this step practically set the course of a future continental crossing, it sparked violent protests from the representatives of a route over Queensland.
The final decision to build the line was made when the South Australian government agreed to finance the 3,200-kilometer route between Port Augusta and Darwin, while the British-Australian Telegraph Company laid the submarine cable between Java and Australia in return.
Construction and completion
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Project management has been entrusted to the director of the South Australian Telegraph Administration , Charles Todd . He divided the route into three sections. The northern (Darwin to Tennant Creek ) and southern (Port Augusta to Alberga Creek in South Australia) were contracted out to private contractors, the middle he and his administration built himself. The construction required 36,000 wooden telegraph poles, insulators , batteries , wire and other equipment which was mainly ordered in England .
Todd put together a team of surveyors , carpenters , laborers and cooks under John Ross for the middle section , who left Adelaide on horseback and in carts of oxen with provisions loaded for many weeks.
Construction of the northern section made good progress until November 1870 when the rainy season set in and work stalled. The living conditions of the workers also deteriorated due to the rain, mosquitoes and bad food, so that they went on strike on March 7, 1871. Weeks later, the entrepreneur gave up on the northern section, which by this time had reached the King River, south of Katherine , so that the telegraph administration had to take over another 700 kilometers of the line beyond the workload it had to cope with. The reinforcement required for this alone took six months to even reach Darwin. The chief engineer here decided to make the line more operational from the north, so that the remaining gap in the transmission of messages to the southern section could be closed by a rider relay until the telegraph line was finally completed. The Queensland government took advantage of this situation to plead for a freeze on construction and a renewed route over their territory - in vain.
The submarine cable from Java reached Darwin early - the agreed date was December 31 - on November 18, 1871, and was connected to the telegraph line the following day. At the end of 1871, 300 kilometers of the transcontinental pipeline were still missing. A message tentatively sent over the unfinished line on May 22, 1872, took nine days from Darwin to Adelaide.
Almost nine months late, the two ends of the line were connected at Frew's Ponds on August 22, 1872, and Todd was able to send the first message over the completed line:
"WE HAVE THIS DAY, WITHIN TWO YEARS, COMPLETED A LINE OF COMMUNICATIONS TWO THOUSAND MILES LONG THROUGH THE VERY CENTER OF AUSTRALIA, UNTIL A FEW YEARS AGO A TERRA INCOGNITA BELIEVED TO BE A DESERT +++"
"Today, after two years, we have completed a 2,000-mile long communication line right through the heart of Australia, which until a few years ago was still a terra incognita, which was assumed to be a desert +++"
The telegraph line was a great success from the start, not only for communication between the motherland and the colonies, but also for opening up the area along the line. Gold was discovered in various locations during construction, including Pine Creek and the MacDonnell Ranges relay station . The relay stations were also excellent starting points for the expeditions of other researchers, such as Ernest Giles , William Gosse , and Peter Egerton Warburton , who advanced west from there.
Between 1875 and 1877 a branch line was laid through the Nullarbor Desert , which then also connected Western Australia to the intercontinental line.
business
The telegraph line was attached to the masts with porcelain insulators . Originally it was a single galvanized iron wire. The porcelain insulators were shaped in such a way that when it rained, the water would drip off and there was no grounding . Nevertheless, a small amount of voltage was lost, which made a relay station necessary every 250 to 300 kilometers given the low operating voltage. There the mored messages were received, copied and entered manually into the next section of the line. The operating voltage was generated with a series of elements, which consisted of large glass vessels that worked with magnesium and copper sulfate as well as lead and zinc electrodes . Each of the elements produced 1.5 volts .
Maintaining the line was a big problem and difficult from the start. Weather-related damage, but also deliberate damage, kept occurring. The Aborigines soon discovered that excellent " flint knives " could be knocked out of the insulators and that the wire was also very versatile. This led to violent clashes: On September 22, 1874, Aborigines attacked the Barrow Creek station and killed two telegraph operators. The policeman stationed there later launched a retaliatory attack. This incompatibility of modern technology and the way of life of the Aborigines led to sometimes brutal attacks on them and their further displacement into even more remote habitats.
Termites also posed a problem for the cypress wood masts. Therefore, from 1883, the original wooden masts were replaced by iron, galvanized Oppenheimer masts . They were made in Manchester , England . The special thing about it was that it consisted of three segments that were put into each other for transport. The segments were pulled apart on site, and glowing iron rings were placed around the two connecting points, which were then cooled with water. The cooled rings pulled the segments together so that they could no longer be pushed together.
In 1899, a second wire was installed next to the original single wire to increase the capacity of the line. A copper line was used for the first time . Later the first iron line was replaced by a copper one, since copper is a better conductor. In the first quarter of the 20th century, the capacity was doubled again - now on four lines.
- Development of telegraph poles
Oppenheimer mast for one line. Old Telegraph Station Open Air Museum , Alice Springs
Mast for four lines. Museum in Adelaide River
Mast for nine lines. Old Telegraph Station, Alice Springs
Mast for seven lines
Further development
The telegraph line was one of the great engineering achievements of the 19th century. It was later followed by other, parallel infrastructure, the Stuart Highway , the North Australian Railway and in 2004 the Central Australian Railway . The telegraph line was expanded several times and operated until 1980.
A number of the former relay stations of the telegraph line have been preserved as monuments and / or museums . The Alice Springs Telegraph Station is the largest of these facilities, with its own visitor center. But the relay stations in Tennant Creek and Barrow Creek have also been preserved and can be visited.
literature
- Denis O'Byrne: Telegraph Stations of Central Australia . GPO Alice Springs 1995, ISBN 0-7245-1595-X .
Web links
- The website National Library of Australia with further background information (English)
- Communication by Post, Telephones and Telegraph, 1800–1970 (English)
- Connecting a Continent: Early Telecommunications in Australia (English)
- Overland Telegraph Line at Flinders Ranges Research (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Information from: Adelaide River Museum.