The overland telegraph line in central Australia, first completed in the 1870 to 1872 period, is a much written about event. At the time, it was to be a great construction feat. This essay is about the logistics of the task, the supply of goods and service to it and how the supplies were distributed along the continent. The aim is to give a basic overview of the enormity of the task, and Christopher Giles gives a key indication of just how much effort was invested in the success of the goal when he was camped at Charlotte Waters. The process has been stepped out here in a month-by-month article that shows when, where and how major efforts were being made to equip the teams and working stock in order to get the job done.
Whilst Adelaide was the base for operational logistics of supply,
evidence suggests that Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane also contributed. The
article, however, only includes South Australia and the north (Northern
Territory) of South Australia in the period of construction. Because of the
enormity of the task, this article can only give an indication of the depth of
what took place in order to supply and sustain the work. The rest is up to the
readers’ imagination. The unsung heroes were the cameleers, drovers, teamsters
and wagon drivers. These folk made the task possible bringing every necessity
of life and goods for the job into Australia’s unknown interior for the first
time since European settlement. Food, water, and working stock are the focus,
as are some of the key folk involved in the operation and where they were when
major events took place.
In May of 1871, James Todd reported to government that two-hundred and fifty tons of goods had been sent to the Australian interior, rations for twelve months, several thousand sheep and a large number of horses and bullocks; all of which were distributed from the Peake station.
At
the Peake depot, storemen Bacon and Blood carried the responsibility of
monitoring all supplies with government efficiency and precision. With accurate
bookkeeping they were able to determine the progress of construction and the
requirements of each camp and team. This was aside from requisitions alerting
them to individual site needs. Every item was meticulously recorded.
The job was to make famous one item as an Australian icon; ‘Bully Beef’ as it was to become known, was supplied for the job from Booyoolee Station, Beltana. It later became a staple diet food for Australians during the depression and the world wars. The haulage of goods to Peake was such that it would take two months for ten tons of supply to arrive from Adelaide by dray.
The method of construction
over the twenty-six months was not unlike the methods used today. The surveyors
and supervisors were at the lead, marking and finding appropriate directions
across the landscape. Once the route was flagged, forward clearing parties
would follow opening the scrub at a width of ten metres. They would be about
fifteen kilometres ahead of the poling parties. The overseer of these would peg
the poles in the centre of the clearing at about twelve poles to the kilometre.
The rear parties would be the wiring crew, the joints being soldered at
connection. Behind them were the telegraph operators testing and using the
completed sections. Each man on the job was to get about ten kilos of goods a
week, this was not including gear to do the job. The whole of Adelaide was
involved in supplying belongings, foods, goods and service for the task and
rations for the parties.
The first parties forward were the explorer groups, they were followed by the heavier stronger less prone bullock teams. And behind them came the horse drawn wagons which were lighter and better suited to now established trails. These could better perform the task of supplying camps quickly once the heavy drays and road making crews had preceded them. The cameleers would have done a fine job operating ahead of the bullocks to supply the working parties and Dr Renner mentions them several times in his diary.
Dr Renner in his diary gives
a good indication of the times and conditions once he arrived on site in
February 1871, by then the operation was well established. For example, he
suggests that for a majority of the line, the access road was to the west of
the construction, if not part of it. That there was water available at least
every second days travel in wells or creeks, and that he had with him at least
one water cart (occasionally more) at all times as part of his contract. The
work crews seemed to shift their tents every two to four days.
JUNE 1870
On the 25th,
Charles Todd had by now got the authorisation to construct the line and
structured his plans accordingly; he called for tenders. In the north, Captain
Douglas and two ships arrived in Port Darwin on the 24th and they
combined to double the population, announce with much ceremony a great work to
begin, and change the northern colony from a struggle to an excited place.
JULY 1870
North contractors Darwent
and Dalwood received there contract on the 20th and immediately:
‘bestirred themselves and turned Adelaide upside down in frantic preparations’.
They had four weeks to prepare for a task of profound difficulty and personal
endangerment. Eighty men out of four hundred were selected for the task; ship
loading began on the 19th, on board went the men, seventy-eight
horses, ten bullocks, hay, wagons and cases by the dozen and more than seventy
tonnes of wire and other equipment. Another ship had left earlier with a full
load of stores and supplies.
A survey party left
Palmerston (now Darwin) on the 23rd led by surveyor McLachlan, he
was under instruction through government resident Douglass to find a route
southeast to the head of the Roper in the northern region.
AUGUST 1870
Agent General Dutton for the
South Australian government in London, placed an order with ‘Johnson and Nephew’
of Manchester, for over three thousand kilometres of wire; iron poles and
insulator pins were also ordered from ‘Oppenheimer and Company’.
The 29th found
three of the Government parties set to move off from Adelaide with sixty or
seventy men bound for the centre of the continent. Their tally of equipment
included two, two-hundred and thirty litre water tanks per gang. Four,
one-hundred and forty litre tanks with one on the express wagon. Nine
five-horse teams and wagons, six saddle horses and the express wagons had
four-horse teams; there were three of these. The government parties, says
Christopher Giles, were equipped to look out for their own supplies, but the
construction materials were a different matter. Thus contracts were let for the
haulage of goods from the south by E M Bagot. He engaged ‘a great number of
horse and bullock teams, besides several caravans of camels’.
SEPTEMBER 1870
On the 15th, the first pole was planted for the north contract at Palmerston. The boss of one of the northern crews, WA Paqualin, had made an official request to Resident Douglas for firearms; on the 20th he received six Enfield rifles, six-hundred rounds of ammunition and 900 caps. He had originally requisitioned for the rifles, six hundred rounds, two kegs of blasting powder, twelve coils of fuse and two grindstones. Douglas in a dispatch to the South Australian government said he could not supply the McMinn party with substantial supplies from the colonies’ stock. He did, however, part with what was reasonable at the time, namely ‘ten working bullocks, and as many other articles required by him as I could spare’.
The northern McLachlan exploring party had returned to Palmerston on the 25th saying there was good country for traversing to the Roper River. Ralph and John Millner departed Port Augusta on a pioneering expedition to drive stock to the north; they had four thousand-three hundred sheep, one hundred and sixty horses, two bullock wagons and one-hundred and fifty goats.
All of Bagot’s southern
section work crew were present in Port Augusta on the 30th and ready
to plant the first south pole. All pieces of the five government parties had
left Port Augusta by the end of the month, the advance parties travelling
quicker than the main caravan which was doing about thirty kilometres a day.
OCTOBER 1870
Bagot and his team planted
the first pole at Port Augusta on the 1st.
The advance parties were at
the Peake on the 15th as Ross’s exploring party from the north
returned. Throughout the month as the parties and caravan travelled, the Peake
began to grow as the first depot for the great work. Tents were made, stores
unloaded and a portable village came into being.
NOVEMBER 1870
Four wagons of wire arrived
on the 2nd, followed a few days later by Afghan cameleers. The Peake
was now a formidable supply station at 28.1lat (Latitude). Explorer
Ross was to be sent out again to try and find a way through the MacDonnell
ranges; two parties left on the 16th and 17th for
northern expeditions. One, Ross, was to go as far north as 21.5lat
and return; the other, Woods, was to make a road to, and establish, a new depot
area at the junction of the Hugh and Finke River. Todd, whilst at the Peake for
a month, was petitioned for a doctor to be appointed to the job site.
In the north, McLachlan
sailed from Palmerston on the 8th for
the task of exploring the Roper River, the intention of Todd was to use this as
a northern supply route. The top end construction gangs were making progress
cutting through heavy bush.
DECEMBER 1870
On the 11th, C
Giles had recorded in his bush diary that the ‘main body of the expedition
occupied the valley of the Stevenson, their camps covering a distance of about
30 miles…lat 260 46 [longitude]’.
On the 9th, the top end crew had poled to
within a few kilometres of the Adelaide River at 13.4lat; on the 25th
they were at Pine Creek 13.8lat. So far they had not had difficulty
with supplies or the wet. The clearing was heavy going and progress was slow
but worthy. Food was going off and was increasingly more difficult
to manage with heat, humidity and ever-greater distances.
On the 25th, McLachlan
was at the Roper managing the details of the survey he had just completed;
one-hundred and sixty kilometres along the river. It was determined suitable
for transport and thus a likely way to supply the construction crews working from
the north and the south. McLachlan made a strategic error however; on leaving
the river he and the ship sailed easterly. Away from Palmerston they took this
vital knowledge thus compromising the supply efforts from Palmerston. It would
not be long before the wet season would severely hamper operations to send
stores to the construction gangs along the present supply line.
As the month progressed, the doctor in Palmerston was busy; he was in electric contact with the construction parties in the interior, ill and bogged down by rain, the teams were in trouble.
JANUARY 1871
The Woods party had not long
been at the Hugh-Finke junction in the south, establishing it as a depot when
the Ross party returned from the north on the 26th, tired and hungry
after ten weeks of exploring. They had not found their objective, a gap through
the ranges. The writings of A Giles (part of the Ross party) indicate that
there were fish and duck to be found in the region as they had ‘managed to hunt
enough breakfast consisting of four ducks and a few small fish’ the day before[1].
C Giles was camped at
Charlotte Waters (25.9lat) and had established a reasonable forward
camp. His diary indicates that his stores were first put in a tent but later
the men had built a store; a sheep yard was made as well as a mess-hut. They
carted stone for a blacksmith forge, and built a shed for a wagonette and the
saddler. The bullock drovers were busy building a break (race) for yoking the
animals. Giles had also procured two-hundred sheep from the main flock and
brought them to Charlotte Waters camp. Supplies were also on the way from the
Peake by bullock dray and would be kept in the new store. The timber to be
harvested for the line in this area was plentiful and seemed to be blue gum and
‘straight as an arrow’.
In the north, the rain began
to become a nuisance along the line, and early in the month had set in. The wet
season was now upon them and was starting to affect the progress of the forward
parties as they worked to stay in front of it. The supplies were becoming short
and this too affected both moral and progress. Paqualins crew were camped at
the Katherine for three weeks from the 28th before he decided it was
time to move; they made rafts and bravely forded the flooded river.
FEBRUARY 1871
They had begun poling and
did sixteen kilometres in ten days. However, by the 24th, sick of
the persistent rain, the men had found the circumstances trying. It was
unlikely that any supply might follow them across the flooded Katherine River;
they were already out of tea, sugar, and soothing alcohol supplies.
One-hundred supply camels
arrived at the Hugh-Finke depot on the 4th from the south, after
which the Ross party was supplied for the trip to the Roper River. On the 9th,
McMinn left the Hugh-Finke depot to look for a way through the ranges and on
the 18th he had found ‘Simpsons Gap’. Supplies had left Adelaide
aboard ship on the 24th for the top end of Australia. Dr Renner was
at the Peake on the 8th and was at Charlotte Waters on the 20th.
C Giles in his diary for the
month at Charlotte Waters shows the blacksmith tyring wheels, the carpenter
making harness yokes, teamsters cleaning and repairing harness, and by mid
month a raft was made from a wagon side to float a group across a creek dryly
to work northwards. There was rain throughout the month. Also, for several days
he reported the influx of wagons, thus: ‘One mile of line up today’, two days
later ‘Length of line up to date, three and a quarter miles’.
MARCH 1871
Arriving back at the
Charlotte depot on the 4th, McMinn brought the good news about the
pass. On the 7th Ross was leaving on a third expedition north; to
the Roper River with twenty two horses and supplies for eleven weeks; the end
of the month saw them at a creek just north of Barrow Creek at 21.2lat.
Mills of the McMinn party was leaving to finalise the route north through the
MacDonnell ranges.
On the 7th,
fifty-six men gave the Northern Territory its first construction industry
strike due to the wet conditions and lack (and quality) of rations. Arriving
with difficulty seven days later, government overseer W McMinn was unhappy
about the standstill. However, Paqualin managed to get progress going again
after W McMinn left for the Roper River; he had with him nineteen horses.
The Paqualin crew poled to
the King River at 14.8lat but by then supplies were non-existent and
none had been brought up. The party became divided about safety and twenty-nine
retreated to the Adelaide River depot with eleven horses, three wagons and
forty-three bullocks. Forty men stayed at the Katherine.
APRIL 1871
Dr Renner arrived at the Hugh-Finke depot on the 29th. C Giles in his diary for the month shows the blacksmith tyring wagon wheels and the carpenter making harness yokes.
MAY 1871
On returning from the Roper River, W McMinn found the situation at King River untenable, so he declared the contract void on the 3rd. On doing so had commandeered ‘all the materials, implements and stock belonging to the contractors. He declared that the work would be continued as a government job’. All work had ceased except for patrols of the line and guards at the depot camps.
On the 19th, Ross
arrived at the Elsey River via the Birdum Creek at 15.3lat, ten
weeks from Charlotte Waters and with supplies running short; he pushed on to
the King River. On the 30th they met the Katherine River, at which
point rations were: ‘80 pounds of flour, 15 pounds of oatmeal and no tea, sugar
or meat’.
JUNE 1871
Ross found the end of the
abandoned north section at the King River on the 2nd and by the 6th
he was dining with the police (Mason and Kepler); a meal that was badly needed.
It was there that they got their first taste of tinned meat, saying: ‘bouilli
beef was quite new to us, but pronounced delicious’. As they ate and learned, a
good deal of the northern crew were sailing for Adelaide on the same day. Port
Adelaide was met with a big surprise on the 8th, for the top end
party had arrived aboard ship, bringing with it McMinn, Paqualin and the bad
news of the cancellation.
Amongst the furore and
debate about the cancellation, it was determined that the contractors had
miscalculated their working stock requirements, and failed to compensate by
ordering more animals and supplies before their charter ship left Palmerston
after they unloaded it in September 1870. Giles recorded much illness in the
north in this period, the flue seemed to be quite prevalent around the camps.
JULY 1871
0n the 11th, the SA government had reached a conclusion that they must manage the northern section, thus they seconded a government railway engineer by the name of Robert Charles Patterson to be the supervisor. ‘In great haste, preparations were made to send a large expedition by sea…Expense was no objection now’. As they had learned from W McMinn, heavy draught horses were unusable in the north, so one-hundred and seventy light horses, five-hundred bullocks and dry fodder were loaded aboard ship. ‘Adelaide merchants and ships’ chandlers did a roaring trade supplying everything’.
He was to complete the section between 19.5lat and 15.2lat. He advertised for men on the fifteenth of July, and over five hundred arrived on the Monday to apply. The infrastructure of Adelaide was once again in full swing, tannery’s, saddlers, home industries, implement makers, food suppliers and corner shops would all have been involved in providing goods for the great work. A saddler had, in no more than three weeks, produced: ‘153 sets of wagon and express harness, 600 hobbles, 1,500 straps and thirteen saddles and bridles in ten days, and produced the last sets of harness in only two days’. This was the second lot of supplies specifically sent north for the task.
Todd had specifically requested government to send the ships and supplies to the Roper, certain that this would be a better strategy. However, the advice was lost in the flurry and they sailed with two-hundred men on the 27th bound for Palmerston. The ships along with Patterson landed at Port Darwin; this would ultimately prove to be a source of second failure for the northern effort.
The Ross party, renewing their effort, left the Katherine River depot on the 1st with twenty five horses and headed for the Roper; by the 25th, only fourteen horses were left. Late in the month, in the Strangways/Roper River junction area, aboriginal resistance confronted them and ‘they all grabbed their firearms…Collectively we could fire 31 rounds without reloading’.
AUGUST 1871
Patterson arrived at
Palmerston on the 24th; there were five supply vessels in the fleet,
the last would arrive in September. Giles reports 194 construction camps in the top end
of the job, between Port Darwin, the Roper River and elsewhere. Eight or nine
horse wagons left Port Darwin headed for Southport and the line with supplies[2].
Of 500 bullocks sent from the south, 110 had died and thirteen were lost on unloading; ten per-cent of the horses had died on the journey north. Ralph Millner, his sheep and his drovers arrived at Attack Creek on the 30th .
SEPTEMBER 1871
Two ships arrived in Darwin harbour on 13th and proceeded to unload; the task was difficult as there was still no jetty built since the first arrival of ships and equipment in June 1870. All stock had to be swum ashore; supplies had to be unloaded onto the water or boats and floated to shore and then hauled up the beach.
Shortly after unloading, a great construction caravan headed out to the line; in one cluster, there were twelve horse-drawn wagons and eleven bullock wagons. That meant there was in total, one-hundred and fifteen bullocks and one hundred horses in the teams. Behind them there was another cluster of supply teams heading for Southport.
Alfred Giles had volunteered
to move some stock on to Southport and his diary describes a large amount of
activity in the area associated with the great work during this month. ‘The
teams consisted of no fewer than 12 horse and 11 bullock teams and a wagonette.
There were generally 100 bullocks, as well as spare bullocks, and eight horses
in each team, with spare horses-a total of about 115 bullocks and 100 horses’.
‘Day by day, in slow stages, the teams moved forward until they safely arrived
at Katherine River on the 30th September, 1871’.
Leaving the Katherine River
on the 28th, an advance survey party had with them three spring
carts and thirteen men. They were to mark out a passage to the Roper and
establish a depot at the appropriate place found by McLachlan nine months
earlier. Along the way they were to sink wells. They surveyed a wagon trail
down the Birdum creek and then made way to the head of the Roper River.
OCTOBER 1871
Giles reports difficulties with water on the 7th: ‘the watercarts returned late from All Saints’ Well’. He was camped on the line probably at exactly 150lat along the Elsey River. Patterson in Palmerston received a telegram from the King River depot, reporting that stock were dying and that wagons had to be abandoned. He then sent an urgent despatch aboard ship on the 25th to Adelaide requesting still more supplies; this was received in the south in December. The message alerted the south that the job was again in jeopardy, the dry and wet seasons were troublesome and that he needed thirty more teams of horses or bullocks to be landed at the Roper River. He then proceeded to the King River.
The teams there were struggling to cross a sandy plain between the King and the Katherine Rivers; team leader McLachlan telegraphed: ‘having left my horses twenty-six miles back…nearly all my horses are knocked up [exhausted/injured]… The wheels of all the new drays are coming to pieces’.
Meanwhile, Bagot had poled
the southern section completely, this had afforded him the ability to send
teams forward to Charlotte Waters to cut poles, he had sent eighteen crews.
Some teams were now being demobilised from the job, the Afghan cameleers were
some of the first to go. Electric communication was published in the papers
sent from The Gums, 30.1lat. Ray Bocaut and the telegraph operators
had reached this point the day before.
NOVEMBER 1871
The 20th was an
historic milestone for the great work, for on this day Port Darwin received the
first international telegram along the now completed international submarine
communication link.
On the 23rd,
Patterson was at the King River, no poling had been done since May, it had just
begun to rain and he noted in his diary ‘I am unutterably weary of the whole
thing’ and ‘Fear expedition must collapse’. A ship left Port Darwin late in the
month, overloaded and bound for the Roper River and the new depot to be set up;
it soon ran aground and the cargo had to be rescued. Another ship was then sent
to the Roper, using valuable time.
On the 13th,
Bocaut and the operators disputed the arming of themselves for the journey
north. The supply officer at Peake said he could not spare any arms, but
reluctantly handed over a carbine and a pistol and thus they were convinced to
move on, three men being unarmed. Woods had discovered on the 1st
that plenty of teams were running short of provisions and so he had headed
south to investigate. On reaching the Peake he was satisfied that they would
soon be replenished.
The four relay stations
being constructed in the north-central region would be supplied with enough
provision to last two years, and currently, if parties were in need of supplies
they could draw from this stockpile.
DECEMBER 1871
Ralph Milner and his sheep were now at the Strangways-Roper junction. All southern sections were completed by the end of December and there was now an approximate six hundred-kilometre gap in the line to be closed from the King River to Tennant Creek as the wet closed in. On the 3rd, electric communications from Alice Springs to Adelaide was opened.
The north crews were
struggling now in the boggy regions and all progress was slow; unloading and
loading stuck wagons, pulling them through and then reloading for a few miles
more. All the while the rain was everpresent, supplies were late or had not
gotten through from Port Darwin and the patience of man and animal was
stretched.
Late in the month Patterson
headed for the Roper depot where he met Milner who advised him that the
government drays from the central section were making slow progress to the
depot, but were unlikely to be able to return to site with supplies; the north
parties would be stranded.
One thousand sheep were
bought from Milner by Patterson on the 26th; he sent six hundred on
to the two forward line camps at Warlock Ponds and the Elsey River, and four
hundred to the Roper depot. Giles does not give the same account as this
however; his information (second-hand information) holds that the stock could
not be pushed through because of flooding. By years end the Roper had forty
men, a jetty yet no supply ship, a rain soaked camp, little rations and
flooding surrounds.
The request from Patterson for more supplies finally arrived in Adelaide, again shaking the resolve of the south.
JANUARY 1872
Rafting the Roper on new
years day, Patterson found the first supply ship which they brought up the
river; and with the use of longboats, supplies were ashore at the depot by the
15th. With rising flood waters it was decided that a supply camp
down river would be needed to offload stores and stock. Todd arrived at the
mouth of the river on the 27th but did not assume much control. The
struggle to establish the depot during flooding would be eased by the arrival
of a paddle steamer at the end of the month. Stores could be easily towed
upstream aboard ship and landed on the jetty. It would become a tent city, a
vast amount of supplies would be landed there and prepared for the time when
the wet would end.
The supply team of Bedford
Hack was struggling in the wet in the vicinity of the flooded Elsey River on
the 20th, and was gladly met by Giles. Hack told Giles that in the
current conditions, rations per man per week would be: ‘six pounds flour with
one pound of biscuits, one pound of sugar, half a pound of tea, and possibly
some meat enough for eight or nine weeks’; he was talking about the famous
tinned meat. Hack would retain seventeen-hundred pounds of flour in case of
emergency. The sheep sent by Patterson reached their vicinity late in the
month.
FEBRUARY 1872
By the 11th, Milner and his sheep were in camp between the Elsey and the King River and Giles counted one-thousand of them, and fourteen horses. On the Roper, the work of shipping and preparing pack-horse supplies continued through the month, waiting for the dry season to arrive.
MARCH 1872
On the 29th Patterson, four men and a team of packhorses departed the depot and struggled through to the line camps which were isolated by waters and desperately short of rations. Following them was the break out, a series of packhorse teams moving away to the south and west to re-supply the stranded parties at Daly Waters 16.2lat, Warlock Ponds (about 14.9lat) and the Elsey River 15.3lat.
APRIL 1872
Stock losses in the three stranded camps were high, but the replenishment from the depot was able to compensate. The rains ceased and work began, and by the middle of the month the operations were in full swing. By now the teamsters and bullock drivers could operate, and haulage was in full swing. The last supply ship was preparing to leave the Roper depot.
MAY 1872
On 18 January 1872 a John
Lewis, his brother and four stockmen had left Adelaide with forty horses and a
buggy to travel to the north country. Whilst in Barrow Creek he had received a
telegram from the southern government asking them to operate a pony express to
bridge the gap in the line. Accepting the contract, they made Tennant Creek the
base with nine men and sixty horses. They bridged the gaps between Tennant
Creek and Daly Waters telegraph stations.
JUNE 1872
From about early in the month the pony express was operating, and by mid month messages were being transmitted from the top end of the country to the southern end.
JULY 1872
The pony
express continued to operate, bridging the gap as four working parties forged
ahead to complete the task of poling and wiring the line.
AUGUST 1872
The last pole to be planted on the job was set on
the 6th at Fergusson Creek camp.
At Frews Ponds (16.8lat)
1872, three miles east of camp; the line had been cut with pliers; Patterson
was the Man. He had, after all his efforts, decided that the glory of making
the last join was going to be his and the men’s. Nine were present when he
joined the line by hand; and he received for his troubles a giant electric
shock from the wire as he held onto both ends to make them join. ‘I had to yell
and let go’ he said. Giles later comments: ‘I have often thought this historic
spot was well worthy of a stone or concrete pillar to commemorate the
completion of so worldwide a work undertaken’.
The task was complete, a
monumental effort had finally seen a completion. The unsung heroes were the
cameleers, drovers, teamsters and wagon drivers. These folk made the task
possible bringing every necessity of life and goods for the job into
Australia’s unknown interior for the first time since settlement. The logistics
and diligence of Todd gave Australia communication with the world. He and many
others ensured that no man or beast would go hungry, and that all supplies
needed reached their destination. Their were five deaths for the period.
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Alfred,.1847?-1931. Exploring in the
‘seventies and the
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GILES, Christopher,. The Adelaide and Port Darwin Telegraph Line:
Some Reminiscences of its Construction. Public Service Review:
South Australia. March 1894 to March 1895.
Mr Patterson’s Appointment to Supervision of Telegraph Construction.
South Australia: House of Assembly. 12th October 1871. No 130.
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