The contract specified eighteen months to build the line but the enormous task took two years being beset by drought, flooding, contractor incompetence on the northern section, and simply the inhospitable nature of the country. But on 22 August 1872 the Overland Telegraph between Adelaide and Darwin was completed. The Governor of South Australia declared a Public Holiday to celebration completion of the Overland Telegraph.



The Java to Darwin undersea cable began working two months later. Now, instead of a 40 days delay for news to come from England by sea (the time had been reduced since the 1850s), messsages from London to Australia took 24 hours. Arrival of news from England within a day of the event taking place caused a significant change in life in the colonies. Using the telegraph was not cheap, a 20-word telegram cost the remarkably expensive sum of 9 pounds, but the convenience and immediacy of the telgraph made the cost worthwhile for many users.



Memorial to Charles Todd and supervisors of the Overland Telegraph construction project erected about one mile east of the spot where the northern and southern sections of the telegraph were joined by R.C. Patterson at 3:15 p.m. on Thursday, 22 August 1872. Building the Overland Telegraph was a major technological and project planning achievement. The single galvanised iron wire (Standard Wire Gauge No 8) had been successfully strung for 3,200 kilometres from 36,000 poles (about 20 poles for each mile of cable) stretched over the inhospitable Australian interior. The task was immense, involving the penetration into mercilessly cruel country of which little or nothing was known and where Burke and Wills had died a few years before. Transport, of the 36,000 poles, 36,000 insulators and pins plus many tons of wire, had been one of the biggest problems. Providing fresh meat was nearly as difficult. There was no refrigeration, so fresh meat had to be transported alive, slaughtered and eaten when required. This vast task in unforgiving, arid country with little or no water but plenty of mosquitoes and flies was completed with the loss of only six men.



Initially cyprus pine and redgum were used for poles except for 3,000 iron poles used in the southern section. White ants quickly devoured timber poles and, over ten years from 1873, wooden poles were replaced by iron poles. Losses in the signal on such a long length of wire would have made the message unreadable at the end so repeater stations were built at about every 250 kilometres. At each repeater station a telegraphist received each message and re-transmitted it to the next station along the line. From Adelaide repeater stations were at Port Augusta, Beltana, Strangways Springs, The Peake, Charlotte Waters, Alice Springs, Barrow Creek, Tennant Creek, Powells Creek, Daly Waters, Katherine and Yam Creek before the line reached Port Darwin. Each repeater station had the same role; telegraphists repeated each message to the next station along the line and linesmen patrolled the section of the line associated with the station or responded to, and repaired, breakages. Nominal manning for a Telegraph Station is listed as two telegraphists and four linesmen but various accounts indicate there was considerable local variation in manning and probably cross-training of telegraphists in line maintenance.



More remote Telegraph Stations were, in every sense, pioneering ventures; they were the first settlements in hitherto unknown regions and became small, self-contained, villages. Alice Springs Telegraph Station has been partly restored to represent the original during the period 1899 - 1908 and gives an idea of the complexity of a Telegraph Station. These stations were required to be self-sufficient apart from a delivery of supplies once a year by camel train. They quickly became centres for hand-outs to local aboriginals as well as starting points for exploration expeditions; the track joining stations became the access route to the interior.



By the 1930s nearby townships had developed sufficiently and the overland telegraph function was transferred to the nearby town Post Office. The Overland Telegraph itself continued operating for many years and was the means by which the rest of Australia was told of the Japanese attack on Darwin in 1942. There are reports of parts of the Telegraph still being used in the 1980s but the date of final use appears not to have been recorded. Unlike the opening of the Overland Telegraph, which was fully recorded and reported, the end was neither recorded nor reported.



