THE OVERLAND Telegraph THE OVERLAND Telegraph

Episode 2CHALLENGES

By Al Finegan

It was Guy Fawkes Day, 5th November 1855, when Alice and Charles Todd sailed up St Vincent Gulf and arrived at Glenelg. As they disembarked, they watched a steamer taking brightly dressed holidaymakers along the Patawalonga River, alive with much frivolity, as they let off fireworks and skyrockets. Alice thought that this was a good omen for their future. They were soon loaded onto a bullock wagon and headed for Woodville, about 5km outside Adelaide. For the first few months of the sea voyage from England, Alice had remained in good health and spirits until they crossed the equator, when she suddenly developed what she thought was seasickness. A few weeks later it dawned on her - she was pregnant.

By: AL Finegan By: AL Finegan

Their first accommodation in Australia was a boarding house with two small rooms for themselves. The accommodation was uncomfortable and infested with fleas. A few days after this miserable stay, a letter arrived saying that the government had managed to secure them a small two-story house in a socially dubious location. Alice didn't care where they were living, provided they could have their own home, even if it was in a wooden cottage on the wrong side of town. Charles wrote to his father saying proudly, “The bluestone observatory is to be commenced immediately. I shall then have a beautiful house, six rooms on the ground floor with calculating rooms, nice veranda front, and an acre of ground. And, by the way, Alice is pregnant.”

Their first view of Adelaide was disappointing. Built on a rich alluvial and limestone plain and named after the wife of King William IV, the city had been designed on a grand scale. But when Alice arrived, it was just a gaggle of shops with wide verandas and no glass in the windows. Only two buildings reached three stories. The roads were unpaved and there were no footpaths. Horses were tethered anywhere, bullock wagons outnumbered traps, and the rubbish whorled at the street corners. Alice felt stifled by the scorching winds, but Charles found Adelaide’s bizarre weather patterns intoxicating. The colony was home to various religious sects. The German Lutherans, unwanted in Frankfurt, had settled in the Barossa valley, beginning a prime wine making industry. The Quakers were helping to build a library. The Protestant Italians were making dried kangaroo paste like prosciutto. But not one immigrant to Adelaide had secured passage by stealing a sheep. At this time, it was the only town in Australia that could boast more churches than pubs.

South Australia, founded in 1836 was known as the paradise of dissent and had been conceived by philanthropists as a mini-utopia for religious groups seeking tolerance. The philanthropists hoped that the colony would become an extension of the old country with all the good, but without the evil of the old society. According to the proposal they gave to parliament in their application to start a new colony, they intended to, “… create an earthly paradise of perfected human nature.” Ah, we humans can but dream.

When Alice was heavily pregnant, they moved to their new home and observatory in Brougham Lane, with a garden and fruit trees. Four months after their arrival, Charlotte Elizabeth was born, and became known as Lizzie. The teenage mother amused herself learning to be a wife. She read out snippets from the newspapers over breakfast and found novel uses for her wedding presents, such as silver asparagus holders which she used to clip down fly nets. At first, Charles insisted on accompanying Alice and Lizzie shopping, worrying that most things were excessively dear and that he must teach her to be prudent.

Alice’s only complaint was that her husband would often become so engrossed in new scientific ramblings that he would forget that she was there and that his fried eggs would congeal on the plate. But life in the in the new continent never seemed dull. After six months, the Todds managed to hold their first dinner party. Alice was in her element. Her family had thrived on dinner parties and the entertainment of prominent citizens.

Charles, never one for social occasions, was soon in awe of Alice as she charmed the elite of Adelaide society.

It wasn't long before Todd was admired for having married such an enterprising woman. She may not have been a great beauty - her nose was slightly too wide, her mouth too tight, but she was admired for her elegant style. She had genuine charm and was enthusiastic, energetic, and healthy. As a couple they received more invitations than the bachelor Todd would ever have received, and they were soon taken under the wing of the Governor and his wife. Their first year was a very happy one. Alice’s gamble seemed to have paid off.

Charles soon gained an understanding of the activities of the government and of the small department that he had inherited. He was undeterred by the fact that a private Telegraph system had started the day he arrived in Adelaide, linking the city with the port. Within a month, he had set about building his own government line and put the cowboy operators out of business. Within a year, his new enterprise had transmitted nearly 15,000 messages yielding a revenue of some 366. He was beginning to pay his way and his reputation began to spread.

In the meantime, the newly married couple were placed on the roster for flowers in the church, the focal point of all social gatherings. Life was basic, but the frugal former bachelor didn't mind. They bought chickens and a cow, and the evening entertainment was

Alice playing her piano.

After the first year, Charles was frequently gone for months on end. Only days after Lizzie was born in 1856, he was drawing up travel plans. Encouraged by the success of his first Telegraph line, he agreed with the new governor, Sir Richard MacDonnell, that they should build a connection to Melbourne, linking the two colonial capitals. This was accepted and became far more pressing than a detailed study of the stars. The Governor dispatched Charles by ship to Melbourne to haggle a price. There Charles met Samuel McGowan, Victoria's Superintendent of Telegraphs, who became his lifelong friend. McGowan was the first man to build a Telegraph line in Australia. He had studied under Professor Samuel Morse before coming to Australia and introducing telegraphy to the new continent. The two men agreed that the Victorian line should be extended to the border and Charles would build a 500km stretch to meet it. Charles bought a horse from McGowan and made his first outback trip to Adelaide over 950km, learning to ride along the way.

As the line developed, Charles would ride out to the work in progress, encouraging his teams. The line was finished in July 1858, and three months later, Sydney was also joined. So now the three capitals could communicate within minutes. His success boosted his confidence and reputation and confirmed the governor's high opinion of his character, ability, and vision. Charles was awarded 1820 good service pay. He was also praised for having discovered that the position of the 141st Meridian, the boundary between SA and Victoria, was 4km out, and by moving the boundary in SA favour, he acquired much needed new arable land for the poorer colony. After five years, Alice had borne two more children. She was pleased when her extended family moved to a new observatory in West Parklands. There was a paddock as well as the observatory in the garden. They also had a Moreton Bay fig tree and a pepper tree for shade. The best part was the slate bath on the veranda and the wide front staircase.

Charles was always busy with some project. He expanded the telegraph's reach by 300km to Port Augusta at the head of Spencer Gulf. Each day he sent a news bulletin compiled from Melbourne news to towns in SA. He added the weather reports from other Australian cities to his daily bulletin. He made a point of being the fastest telegraphist in the colony, working at 35 words per minute and sending up to 60 messages in an hour. While his operators often fumbled with the new Morse code, he could read messages just by listening to the clicking of the apparatus, instead of reading the actual dots and dashes. Often on Sundays, Alice and the children would creep into his observatory. The proud dad would feign surprise, then let them take turns looking at the moon through the telescope, with much wonderment.

During the first five years Charles continued with this dream of connecting Australia to England. Letters, messages, bills, and government instructions all had to come by boat via Ceylon or around the Cape of Good Hope. “Australians felt unloved,” Charles pointed out to his friend McGowan in a letter he sent in 1857. This five-month communication delay condemned the colonies at the end of the world to a secondclass existence. Graziers, having sent their annual wool bales to Britain, would discover too late that the market now craved Indian cotton. Mining companies would send back opals and gold. A year later they received paltry cheques because diamonds were all the rage for hat pins and brooches on Regent Street. Australians had to read 5-month-old London newspapers. They rushed back to Britain on news that a parent was dying, to be told when they docked it had only been a bad cold. They were always the last to know when a new Prince or Princess had been born. Adelaide would go into a frenzy of letter writing in the days before the monthly boat departed, and the newspapers brought out special editions to send home.

The new continent was desperate for a cultural, personal, and economic link with the rest of the world, and Charles wanted to be the one who provided it. He spent his evenings poring over possible routes as Alice mended his breeches. For the first few years after Charles arrived, he had been reluctant to admit his plans to anyone except Alice. After all, no one had yet managed to cross Australia, let alone string a wire from north to south. Some cartographers were still convinced that central Australia was covered by an inland sea. Other experts speculated that it was controlled by tribes of black warriors, and the romantics hoped for hidden valleys and lost civilisations. Charles had to accept that if there was to be a Telegraph link it was more likely to go from the gulf of Carpentaria in the north down the East Coast to the bigger richer cities of Sydney or Melbourne. Adelaide, with its five main streets, would never be deemed grand enough to become the international telegram centre for Australia.

Then came a big event that changed everything. John McDouall Stuart, an estate agent, made his name when he crossed Australia from south to north for the first time, arriving back on the 24th July 1862, seven years after Charles had arrived. The SA Government gave him a reward of 2000. Sadly, the trip had crippled him. His hair had turned white, he was nearly blind from the sun, and he had suffered badly from scurvy. Alice was shocked when she was introduced to this wizened, wheezing, arthritic testament to the hardships of the interior. Yet she knew in her heart that her husband would not easily be deflected from his vision. She had begun to believe that their future happiness would depend on the success of her husband’s ambition.

Charles’ excitement was uncontained as he now knew that an Overland Telegraph was no longer a dream.

Barry Clark Bribie Island

Historical Society

This article is about the first person who could be called “Australian” and our most famous exploring sailor and a well-travelled cat. The suburb on Bribie is named BONGAREE and we should be proud to have this link to a remarkable indigenous man and his English friend Matthew Flinders, a great maritime explorer who gave the name AUSTRALIA to this continent.

Bongaree and Matthew Flinders were the first outsiders to set foot on Bribie Island when they came aboard the sloop Norfolk in 1799 looking for inland rivers along the unexplored coastline.

It was 113 years later in 1912 that the name Bongaree was given to the historic location when a jetty was built, and a steamship service started by the Brisbane Tug Co. They wanted the place to be named BANYA, the native name of an Oyster camp near their newly built Jetty, but the Lands Department decided to call it Bongaree, with the same spelling that Matthew Flinders used.