Australian Overland Telegraph Line

"Overland Telegraph" redirects here. For the 1951 film, see Overland Telegraph (film).

Water sources known to Aboriginal people largely determined the route of the Overland Telegraph Line through the dry interior of Australia and, two decades later, the Central Australia Railway

The Australian Overland Telegraph Line was an electrical telegraph system for sending messages the 3200 kilometres (2000 miles) between Darwin, in what is now the Northern Territory of Australia, and Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. Completed in 1872 (with a line to Western Australia added in 1877), it allowed fast communication between Australia and the rest of the world. When it was linked to the Java-to-Darwin submarine telegraph cable several months later, the communication time with Europe dropped from months to hours; Australia was no longer so isolated from the rest of the world. The line was one of the great engineering feats of 19th-century Australia and probably the most significant milestone in the history of telegraphy in Australia.[1][2][3]

  1. ^ W. A. Crowder's diary: the Overland Telegraph Line National Library of Australia.
  2. ^ Wendy Lewis, Simon Balderstone and John Bowan (2006). Events That Shaped Australia. New Holland. p. 66. ISBN 978-1-74110-492-9.
  3. ^ "The end of isolation". Australia's defining moments digital classroom. National Museum of Australia. 2022. Retrieved 21 August 2022.