150 year celebration of the Overland Telegraph Pole from Darwin to Port Augusta

A special event commemorating 150 years since the Overland Telegraph Line was installed connecting Darwin to Adelaide and London will be celebrated in August.

Darwin historical author, Derek Pugh has just completed a book on the Overland Telegraph Line. Picture: Glenn Campbell

A SPECIAL event commemorating 150 years since the Overland Telegraph Line was installed connecting Darwin to Adelaide and London will be celebrated in August.

A new book, Twenty to the Mile: The Overland Telegraph Line, by author and historian Derek Pugh, said it marked a significant achievement in the Top End’s history.

“It was the internet of the day, allowing rapid communication with the world,” Mr Pugh said.

“It provided almost instant access to information and broke the tyranny of distance.”

He said before the telegraph line was connected, contact with the rest of the world was achieved through the mail and international news reached Darwin in published news­papers that were months old.

Mr Pugh said the book highlighted how communications between Darwin and ­Adelaide went from weeks to minutes.

“They were exciting times, businessmen placed orders, did their banking and gathered market information,” he said.

“Colonial governments ­received directives from the British parliament direct.

“Prosperity and wealth blossomed.”

Mr Pugh said many people claimed that the building of the Overland Telegraph Line was the greatest engineering achievement of the 19th ­century.

Although the project hit a few snags along the way.

Mr Pugh said the leader of the technicians at the OTL at the time of its installation, a man called Robert Patterson, climbed a ladder at Frew’s Ironstone Ponds, to connect the two ends of the telegraph line.

“He promptly received an electric shock,” he said.

“He had to tie a handkerchief around the end of the line and have another go before it could be connected.”

The wires were connected on August 22, 1872, and the book celebrates the 150th anni­versary of the first form of communication between the Top End and the rest of Australia and the world.

Mr Pugh has researched the book for six to seven months and said it had taken three months to write.

He said there were hundreds of men and women who worked on the line, used it and relied on it for survival or died on it during the 19th century.

“The book honours all those people who were part of the journey to improve communication between Darwin and the rest of Australia,” he said.

“A documentary of the OTL is also in production at the ­moment and is due for release before August 22.”

His books will be available at most bookstores or can be ordered online from derek [e-mail]