7/09/2019

Just a relax day in Alice. Stocking up on food and seeing a couple of things around town. One of the first things to look at was the old telegraph station. It’s pretty impressive. It marks the original site of the first European settlement in Alice Springs. It was stablished in 1871 to relay messages between Darwin and Adelaide along Australia’s Overland Telegraph Line.  This not only connected Australia’s population centres with the north of the country, but it also connected Australia up with the undersea telegraph network of the British Empire.  Prior to 1872, a message back to England would travel by boat and take 3 to 4 months each way.  However, after the telegraph line was built, morse code messages travelling through Alice Springs could reach London in as little as 5 hours – slow by today’s standards, but revolutionary for people of the 19th century!