Most of us know about the Overland Telegraph between Adelaide and Darwin. We don't all realise that it was built in three stages, beginning with the middle section for some reason I have never found out.
The contractors had to deal with a lack of water, with scarce timber for poles and with hostile Aborigines. It wasn't easy but the line was completed on time in 1872, running across 3200 kilometres, much of it built across some of the hardest country in the world.
It was to connect with a submarine cable brought from Java by the British-Australia Telegraph Company and that cable, too, was completed on time. When the two were joined Australia could get and send news to and from Europe at a speed that had not been believed possible.
However, that time was still measured in hours rather than the seconds a message takes to cross the world today.
You see, a telegraph line took only a coded signal, not voice transmission. An operator would type in the message using a simple code, usually Morse, and it would travel to the next relay station, where it would be sent on again, and so on until it reached its destination and was decoded to become a hard-copy telegram.
That was not the beginning of telegraphy in Australia. This nation's first telegraph line ran from Melbourne to Williamstown and was completed in 1854. It was financed by the government but private companies dominated the telegraph service until mid-20th century. In December of that year the line was extended from Williamstown down to Geelong. It was also connected to Queenscliff and Port Melbourne, so that shipping news was almost immediate. Another piece of news, said to be Geelong's first telegraph message to Melbourne, announced the Eureka Stockade.
Running the lines was fairly easy where there was timber for the poles. A narrow track was cleared for the line, though in some places the insulators for the wire were attached to grown trees.
By 1860 Victoria had a vast network of telegraph lines, covering 2697 kilometres of wire, but none of that was in Gippsland. Not one inch.
The Gippsland line of wire, from Melbourne to Sale, led to much heated argument, and no little confusion. The route first favoured was out through Oakleigh, Dandenong Cranbourne, the southern side of the Great Swamp and through the Strzeleckis to Rosedale. This bizarre choice was probably intended to make the whole thing too difficult to fund "just yet."
Some of the delay was probably due to the recorded competition between Rosedale and Sale to be the Gippsland hub, and part would have been due to the parochial competition that always arose over railway routes, roads, etc.
A northern route also was planned running through Oakleigh, Dandenong, Berwick, Pakenham and the Buneep over the ridge between Warragul and Drouin, to Shady Creek on to the Latrobe and thence to Rosedale. This route won out and Thomas Thompson carried out the survey. George Young was contracted to build the line, and the specifications for both men included a line from Sale to Port Albert, still a busy trading port. Work began in late 1863 and went ahead very quickly.
Two points of interest are there were to be no intermediate stations and that the people along the successful route referred to their area as North Gippsland.
The construction contract included provision for a clearing 80 feet (14 metres) wide, which could be used as a cattle route into and out of Gippsland. For some strange reason, from the Buneep to Sale construction only required a clearing of five feet around each pole. I have no information on how effective this was in terms of falling branches and such, but I do know the people of Rosedale and Sale were significantly underwhelmed. One frequent objection was that the fallen timber from the clearing would add to the huge difficulties already experienced by people using the track.
In 1864 the line reached Sale but the settlements between Melbourne and Sale had to wait a long time for connection. Rosedale was connected in 1867. In 1871 Dandenong got a telegraph station and so did Shady Creek.
The line from Sale to Port Albert was completed in 1864, through Longford, Stradbroke, Carrajung and Tarraville, which got a telegraph station in 1877.
Strangely, perhaps to serve the developing gold mines, Walhalla had been connected in 1870, on a line strung from Sale,
The Sale-Port Albert line was extended through Alberton (1889), Welshpool (1890) and Foster (1873). Yarram got its telegraph station in 1882. In 1887 a telegraph station was opened in Leongatha, but there was still not one for Korumburra.
Sale also was the start point for a line to Stratford in 1873, which went on to Maffra in 1875. Traralgon got its own telegraph station in 1875 as well.
1877 was a gala year for Gippsland as the copper wires reached many new places. The creation of a new line following the railway was a large part of that. Pakenham, Bunyip, Drouin and Moe all got telegraph stations in that year. Morwell was connected to the wire two years after Moe, and one can imagine how that was received in Morwell.
Warragul wasn't given a telegraph station until 1881, though a junction had been created with a line out to Buln Buln in 1877. Why it took four more years for Warragul remains a mystery. Trafalgar was built into the system in 1883 and Glengarry was added in 1884. It is not always easy to understand the various timings on this, especially where the line passed through a town but without a local connection.
The various telegraph lines continued to spread until there were few Gippsland communities without a telegraph connection. The telegraph stations were often in railway stations at first, then in port offices and in a few cases in rather grand buildings for the "post and telegraph".
The system was very busy and in the Second World War it was of crucial strategic importance. Usage began to decline after the war and the telegraph system was slowly closed down, and telegrams began to vanish from the scene. Australia's last telegram was sent in 1963, or, more correctly the last telegram sent only by that "single copper wire." An era ended.
There are people in Gippsland who are 60 years old and have never sent, seen or received a telegram.