Alice Springs recalls South Australia's great go-it-alone feat: Charles Todd's Darwin-Adelaide 1870s telegraph line
Alice Todd, wife of Charles Todd, who oversaw the 3,200km telegraph line linking Darwin to Adelaide in the 1870s.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
The name Alice Springs is among reminders of the Northern Territory of South Australia as it was called from 1863 to 1911 when it was administered from Adelaide. But it also recalls one of South Australia’s great go-it-alone feats.
In 1870, the South Australian government, with the help and influence of its postmaster general and astronomer/scientist Charles Todd agreed to build a 3200-kilometre telegraph line from Darwin to Port Augusta. already linked to Adelaide, if the British-Australian Telegraph Company would lay a submarine cable from Java to Darwin.
When completed in 1872, Australia, via Adelaide, could comunicate directly with the rest of the world.
ohn Ross, a Scottish-born bushman in his fifties, had to mark out the trail for the telegraph line to follow. There had to be enough water and timber and no mountains. Ross followed John McDouall Stuart’s tracks as close as possible but deviated in the MacDonnell Ranges.
Next came the surveyors including William Whitefield Mills who, in March 1871, wrote that he had found a dry riverbed, “with numerous waterholes and springs, the principal of which is the Alice Springs, which I had the honour of naming after Mrs Todd”.
Also in 1871, surveyor Gilbert Rotherdale McMinn found Rungutjirpa, an important spiritual place for the Arrernte people, that went on the map as Simpson’s Gap, after A. A. Simpson, president of the South Australian branch of the Royal Geographical Society. (Simpson Desert also acknowledges him.) Long before, Simpson’s Gap was “Rungutjirpa” to the Arrente people.
South Australia administered the Northern Territory for 48 years from 1863 with a responsible government minister in Adelaide in concert with the government resident in Palmerston (Darwin), supported by a few local departments.
During that time, Ayers Rock was named after seven-times 19th Century South Australia premier Henry Ayers. It became Ayers Rock/Uluru in 1993 and reversed to Uluru/Ayers Rock in 2002.
