Charles Todd directs the engineering triumph of Port Augusta-Darwin telegraph line 1870-72 following Stuart's route
The telegraph line project linking Port Augusta (and thus Adelaide) and Darwin, led by Charles Todd (bottom left), was launched at ceremony (at right) in Darwin in 1870.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
John McDouall Stuart’s 1861-62 crossing of the Australian continent led to one of the 19th Century’s greatest engineering achievements by South Australians under Charles Todd. From 1870-72, Todd, using Stuart’s maps, organised and led three teams to construct a 3,200-kilometre overland telegraph line of 36,000 posts, pins and insulators for a single wire linking Darwin with Port Augusta, and thus Adelaide.
With a background at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, Todd came to Adelaide in 1855 as its superintendent of telegraphs – later also government astronomer, postmaster general and meteorologist. A year after arriving, Todd’s enthusiasm for telegraphs saw the first government link between Adelaide and Port Adelaide. He followed this with a line to Port Augusta (1865), then to Melrose. Todd worked with Victorian telegraphs superintendent Samuel McGowan to link Adelaide and Melbourne by telegraph and planned a national telecommunications system.
An eventual link to England loomed possible when a submarine cable from England reached Java. With Stuart’s expedition showing a route from Adelaide to a northern point near Java, South Australian premier Henry Bull Strangways decided in 1870, independent of other colonies, to build an overland telegraph line from Port Augusta to Darwin, if the British-Australian Telegraph Company would lay a submarine cable from Darwin to Java, enabling a link to England.
As head of the £128,000 Port Augusta to Darwin telegraph line project with an 18-months deadline, Todd divided construction into southern, central and northern sections. His detailed organisation overcame incompetent contractors, white ants eating poles, and workers angered by rancid food, rain and mosquitoes. Almost 3,000 kilometres of galvanised telegraph wire and many batteries were among material transported to workers by bullocks and horse-drawn wagons, Afghan cameleers carried food and supplies to central and southern, inspiring the name of the famous Ghan train line from Adelaide to Darwin.
Stuart’s 1862 expedition had shown a route for the telegraph line but it didn’t detail the changing terrain. Due to the 18-month project time frame, Todd wasn’t able to send surveyors to map the route. Instead, John Ross, also Scottish-born like Stuart, checked the terrain and marked out the trail – with enough water, timber and no mountains – just ahead of the construction team. Ross followed Stuart’s tracks as close as possible but deviated in the MacDonnell Ranges. During March 1871, the Todd River was named and Simpson Gap and the Alice Springs were discovered by William Whitfield Mills, a sub overseer on the project.
The first pole had been planted in the Top End in September 1870 with great ceremony and everything went well until December-January when monsoon season hit. Todd was able to get the central and southern sections completed on time but the northern section wasn’t finished until eight months after the deadline of January 1, 1872.
On August 22, 1872, Todd had the honour of sending the first telegraph message along the 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 telegraph was an immediate success with more than 4000 telegrams sent in the first year, greatly reducing transmission time overseas.
The final stage of connecting Australia by telegraph to the world began in 1875 when the Western Australian and South Australian governments agreed to a line across the Nullarbor plain. This equally challenging project was finished in 1877. Todd’s work was later honoured as fellow of the Royal Society, Royal Astronomical Society, Royal Meteorological Society and Society of Electrical Engineers.
