THE TELEGRAPH
South Australian Register
28 November 1857 (page 2).
One of the most striking facts of Australian progress consists in the rapidity with which the various colonies are constructing lines of telegraphic communication. This fact is not so apparent just now, while the different lines are fragmentary and isolated, as it will become when they are connected with each other.
In New South Wales, in Victoria, in Tasmania, as well as in this colony, short lines have been set up and opened for use, and are accomplishing their respective purposes satisfactorily, but it is not until they come to be combined into one gigantic whole that the full benefit of the great scheme will burst into view.
In New South Wales the least satisfactory progress in this respect has been made.
In Victoria telegraph works are being pushed forward with great rigour. It is expected that communication will be opened between Melbourne and Belvoir, on the southern bank of the Murray, during the present year. This will complete the Victorian section of the main intercolonial line with New South Wales, which will connect Killmore, Tallarook, Longwood, Benalla, Wangaratta, Beechworth and Belvoir, on the Victorian side, with Albury on the northern side of the Murray. Albury will be the terminal station of the New South Wales section. The Victorian section of the South Australian line it is thought, will be completed during the first month of the coming year, being now in a state of considerable forwardness. Shorter telegraphic lines, connecting Port Phillip Heads with Geelong and Melbourne, Melbourne with Ballarat, and so on, are now in full operation.
In Tasmania, Hobart Town and Launceston, distant from each other 120 miles, are already connected by telegraph; and the line is being pushed onward, in a northerly direction, to Cape Grim, where it will be attached to the submarine cable which is to unite the island with the continental communities. Arrangement2 have already been made to proceed with an accurate survey of the route for the submarine line from Cape Grim to King's Island and from thence to Cape Otway.
Nothing has yet been done to forward the construction of the connecting overland line from Cape Otway to Geelong or Queenscliff, simply because it is a work of trifling magnitude, which, according to Mr.McGowan's statement, could be commenced and completed in the time included between giving the order for the submarine cable and its arrival in the colony.
In South Australia, as most of our readers are aware, something over 100 miles of telegraph has been completed and opened for public use. Gawler and Salisbury to the north, Noarlunga, Willunga, Port Elliot and Goolwa on the south, Hindmarsh, Port Adelaide, and the Semaphore Station towards the west are thus connected with the capital. It is scarcely safe to say what amount of work has been done towards the completion of the South Australian section of the intercolonial line, as the enterprise is being pushed on so rapidly that each successive day makes a considerable alteration in the actual state of the work. Mr. Todd, we believe, confidently expects that he will be able to establish telegraphic communication with the border before the end of March next, or within four months from the present time.
Here, then, we have a number of isolated lines, working independently, but rapidly throwing out arms which will ere long embrace the whole Australian continent. We have thus arrived at the eve of a consummation which but recently entered not into our wildest dreams. We cannot yet grasp the great reality which will shortly present itself before us as an accomplished fact, and in a short time longer sink into a familiar thing. We cannot yet realize the full grandeur of that simple fact which is expressed in the words "intercolonial telegraphic communication". With the speed almost of thought itself we shall soon be able to communicate our thoughts to correspondents 1,000 miles away, and to receive instantaneous intelligence of the events transpiring in half a dozen cities as widely separated from each other and from us. Within the limits of Australia, each Australian may enjoy some of the powers and advantages of ubiquity. This is no distant or problematic achievement — we are on the eve of its realization.
During the summer of 1858, Mr. McGowan says, all the projected lines will be completed. There will then be direct communication between Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney and between the two latter cities and Hobart Town, via Melbourne, embracing of course all places of importance on each of the routes, and combining a total of about 2,000 miles of electric telegraph having upwards of fifty offices in active operation.
Precisely the same process which is thus being effected in Australia is going on simultaneously on the grander scale of the entire globe. Europe has at this moment 38,000 miles of telegraph in active operation. The United States of America have completed about 33,000 miles, and there is 1,500 miles of telegraph erected in South America. We presume that the telegraph has been constructed contemporaneously with the railway in British North America but in absence of any accurate statistics we are not able to state the precise length. In addition to the telegraphic construction we have named, there is also in Europe and America about 950 miles of submarine telegraph. In India there is 5,000 miles of telegraphic line which, prior to the late outbreak was in constant operation.
In Australia, as we have seen, there will shortly be 2,000 miles of telegraphic wire stretching from capital to capital. We thus get a grand total of 75,950 miles of telegraphic lines as the extent of the facilities afforded for instantaneous intercourse all over the world. But as in Australia, so in the great world, the full advantage of these independent lines will not be enjoyed until they shall have been united into one grand whole. When the 38,000 miles of Europe shall be joined to the 33,000 miles of America; and when Europe shall stretch out her slender magnetic arm to take hold on Asia, and America shall attach herself to the islands of the Pacific and the Australasian continent; and when the connecting link shall be inserted joining Britain's Indian with her Australian possessions; then will Shakespeare's prophetic conception be more than realized, and the world be encircled with a girdle, of no fairy origin, by whose mysterious agency the extremest spots on the earth's surface may communicate in an interval of time beside which Puck's 'forty minutes' boast will appear intolerably slow.
And how far distant in the future do our readers suppose is this magnificent result? Already is the cable constructed which will accomplish the first part of the anticipated connection, and already has the first attempt, preliminary to the final success, been made. The first attempts to lay down the submarine cables between Dover and Calais, between Holyhead and Dublin, between Cagliari and Algiers, failed as signally as now has failed the first attempt to connect Europe with America. But just as surely as all these failures were followed by brilliant success will the recent defeat be obliterated by complete victory. The completion of this great telegraphic link is a question of time only - and a question which a very brief period will transfer to the category of accomplished facts. The connecting lines between Europe and Asia are in a position scarcely farther removed from completion. A line from Cagliari (in the island of Sardinia) to Corfu, by way of Malta, was in all probability laid down during the month of October last; and this will shortly be supplemented by an extension to Alexandria.
The Euphrates Valley Telegraph Company have waited for a forman from the Sublime Porte until their patience has been exhausted. They will wait no longer and they have commenced the construction of their line without it. They begin their operations at Baghdad, and proceed thence in a southerly direction. It is believed that success will reward the vigour of this Company and that when it is made apparent that the sanction of the Ottoman Government to the scheme is not essential to its success, that sanction will be no longer withheld. But should this route fail, there is another scheme before the public for reaching India by means of a submarine cable down the Red Sea and along the south coast of Arabia. The recent events which have attracted universal attention to India will stimulate both of these projects; and there can be no doubt that, by some route, the great Oriental dependency will, ere many months have passed away, be connected with the centre of British power. The most laggard imagination may then look forward to the telegraphic connection of the four quarters of the globe as an achievement within the sweep even of its lazy wing.
The question remaining, and that to us the most interesting question of the whole, is how long shall we have to wait before, what the Irishman called the fifth quarter, shall be included in the magnetic circle. Our readers already know what steps have been taken towards this consummation, and how little is likely to result from them. But there can be no doubt that the thing will be accomplished, and that at no distant day, either by a submarine cable from the western coast of America to our eastern shores, or from India to our northern or western settlements. It is impossible to believe that Australia, Britain's youngest and fairest child, can be long excluded from that electric grasp which she lays upon all the world beside.