Australian Overland Telegraph Line - Completion

Completion

Running more than seven months late, the two lines were finally joined at Frew's Ponds on Thursday, 22 August 1872. Todd was given the honour of sending the first message along the completed line:

WE HAVE THIS DAY, WITHIN TWO YEARS, COMPLETED A LINE OF COMMUNICATIONS TWO THOUSAND MILES LONG THROUGH THE VERY CENTRE OF AUSTRALIA, UNTIL A FEW YEARS AGO A TERRA INCOGNITA BELIEVED TO BE A DESERT +++

The line proved an immediate success in opening the Northern Territory; gold discoveries were made in several places along the northern section (in particular Pine Creek), and the repeater stations in the MacDonnell Ranges proved invaluable starting points for explorers like Ernest Giles, W. C. Gosse, and Peter Egerton-Warburton who were heading west. Within the first year of operations 4000 telegrams were transmitted. Maintenance was an ongoing and mammoth task, with floods often destroying poles. The extreme remoteness of many of the repeater stations also proved a hazard: on Sunday 22 February 1874 Aborigines attacked the station at Barrow Creek, and killed two operators. A policeman stationed there, Samuel Gason, later led a reprisal attack.

In February 1875, several Overland Telegraph employees departed Port Darwin and were returning to Adelaide on the ill-fated SS Gothenburg. A few days later, they lost their lives in the shipwreck after the Gothenburg hit a section of the Great Barrier Reef and sank.

The final stage of connecting Australia to the world was begun in 1875 when the Western Australian and South Australian governments agreed to build a line across the Nullarbor plain. This equally challenging project was completed in 1877.

Around 1871, a second cable connected Java with an overland line from Perth to Roebuck Bay.

When Darwin was bombed in World War II the line was deliberately cut just before the attack.