Old Telegraph Station (Alice Springs)

Alice Springs Telegraph Office and Post

Wooden telegraph pole. Reconstruction of the first generation of masts

The Old Telegraph Station is a few miles north-east of central Alice Springs . Nevertheless, it is considered the nucleus of the city. Today the telegraph station is an open-air museum . It was built near a point where the groundwater in the bed of the otherwise mostly dry Todd River usually comes to the surface all year round.

Emergence

The telegraph station was a relay station and was set up during the construction of the Trans- Australian Telegraph Line ( Overland Telegraph Line ) between Port Augusta and Darwin in 1871. The line enabled a telegraphic connection between the Australian colonies and Great Britain for the first time . Relay stations were necessary because the electrical voltage with which the line was originally operated was not sufficient to operate it continuously. In the telegraph station, the mored messages were received, transcribed and manually entered into the next section of the line.

The telegraph station was also a meteorological measuring station.

Further use

At the beginning of the 20th century, the telecommunications facilities were moved from the telegraph station outside of the city to Alice Springs. The buildings were subsequently under the program of the Australian government, Aboriginal - Mischlingskinder to take their families away and educate European, converted into a children's home and a school.

Today the facility is a museum. A modern visitor center has existed in the entrance area since 2002. In the museum, historical technical systems of the telegraph company and the living conditions of the former residents are shown. There is also a memorial to the victims of the Australian government's program to take mixed-race children away from their families and raise them in a European way.