Tracing the Overland Telegraph Line through the Heart of Australia. 

The 3200-kilometre-long Overland Telegraph Line from Adelaide to Darwin was completed 150 years ago in 1872. It transformed Adelaide into Australia’s communication hub, connecting the continent with the rest of the world and, with its Morse code messages, heralding the dawn of instant global communication. Author of Whispering Wire Rosamund Burton traced the path of this largely forgotten strand of wire through the country’s vast desert interior to the flood-prone Top End.

Her friend and she cycled the first 800 kilometres from Adelaide through the Flinders Ranges to the deserted outback town of Farina. Then she travelled by 4WD with her husband to Alice Springs along remote dirt tracks searching for derelict telegraph repeater stations, before she delivered an unwieldy campervan from Alice Springs to Darwin. She describes the four attempts of the explorer, John McDouall Stuart, to reach the top of the continent and find a route for the Overland Telegraph Line, and the subsequent building of the line. She shares stories of the sometimes brutal history, as well as the colourful characters she met.

A Powerpoint presentation of photographs can accompany the talk.

Rosamund Burton was born in Ireland and grew up in England before returning to Ireland when she was 18. She became an actress, performing at Dublin’s Gate and Gaiety Theatres, and in the film Educating Rita with Julie Walters and Michael Caine. She then worked for the UK’s first left-wing think-tank. Her first book, Castles, Follies and Four-Leaf Clovers, is about following the ancient Irish pilgrim route, St Declan’s Way (Allen & Unwin 2011). She moved to Australia in the mid-1990s following her fascination with her mother’s stories of growing up in Australia. She writes for a range of newspapers and magazines and lives in Sydney with her husband Steve.