It was the internet before the internet and it changed the country forever, built in a race against the clock and the harsh elements of the outback to connect Australia to the globe.
Ships carrying newspapers and letters to loved ones had a long journey across the sea.
"[The Overland Telegraph Line meant] you could get it in hours. So something like the Queen dies, or there's a change of government or whatever … that stuff was coming through in hours." "That allowed Australia to connect to a submarine cable, which came from Java, which then connected to telegraph lines and submarine cables all the way back to London."The trail from Adelaide to Darwin was well-known by Aboriginal people who had been travelling it as a trade route for thousands of years.
"There were men that died for all sorts of reasons … they would get gangrene, there was frontier violence as well."Also, Darwin had been linked to London for some time before the final points of the line were finally connected.
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