Twenty to the Mile: The Overland Telegraph Line: The Greatest Engineering Feat of 19th Century Australia...

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Derek Pugh

Twenty to the Mile

The Overland Telegraph Line: The Greatest Engineering Feat of 19th Century Australia

Derek Pugh

$39.95

Paperback

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English

Woodslane
01 December 2021

Biography; True stories; True stories: discovery, historical & scientific; History

The greatest engineering problem facing Australia – the tyranny of distance – had a solution: the electric telegraph, and its champion was the sheep-farming state of South Australia. In two years, Charles Todd, leading hundreds of men, constructed a telegraph line across the centre of the continent from Port Augusta to Port Darwin. At nearly 3,000 kilometres long and using 36,000 poles at ’20 to the mile’, it was a mammoth undertaking, but at last, in October 1872, Adelaide was linked to London. The Overland Telegraph Line crossed Aboriginal lands first seen by John McDouall Stuart just 10 years before and messages which previously took weeks to cross the country now took hours. Passing through eleven new repeater stations, built in the remotest parts of Australia, the line joined the vast global telegraph network, and a new era was ushered in. Each station held a staff of six and they became centres of white civilization and the cattle or sheep industry as the Aborigines were displaced. The unique stories of how men and women lived and/or died on the line range from heroic, through desperate, to tragic, but they remain an indelible part of Australia’s history.

By: Derek Pugh
Imprint: Woodslane
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 431g
ISBN: 9780648142195
ISBN 10: 0648142191
Pages: 300
Publication Date: 01 December 2021
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Derek Pugh OAM, an educator and award-winning author, writes in several genres: history, science, travel, and YA fiction. Most well-known is a series on Northern Territory settlement, Tambora, Tammy Damulkurra, and Schoolies. He lives in Darwin and has had a career in primary and secondary education in large urban schools, tiny remote homeland schools, and several international schools. He currently is writing the further history of the Northern Territory's Top End settlements and is promoting the forthcoming sesquicentenary of the Overland Telegraph Line (2022) and the bicentenary of Top End settlement (2024).