Yarraville, Victoria

In this broadcast documentary to mark the Overland Telegraph’s 150th anniversary, noted historian Derek Pugh retraces the line, unearthing stories of remarkable endurance, survival, massacre, and courage.

Screening March 6

In a remote corner of the Northern Territory in 1872, two pieces of wire were joined together and Adelaide was connected to the world via the fledgling settlement at Port Darwin. It was the OverlandTelegraph Line.

“It was as significant as the arrival of the internet and was just as impactful on all corners of society” says Darwin author, historian, and documentary presenter Derek Pugh OAM, “it changed the Australian nation completely.”

Prior to the completion of the Overland Telegraph Line, any news that reached Australia came by ship, and could take as much as twelve weeks. With Port Darwin connected to Java via an undersea-cable, news from London could arrive in Sydney in less than seven hours.

“The impact the OTL had on Australia cannot be overstated. Newspapers could run international news of the day for the first me. Commerce boomed! It was revolutionary” says Derek Pugh.

In just two years, a remarkable man named Charles Todd, leading hundreds of men, constructed a telegraph line across the continent from Port Augusta to Port Darwin. It was nearly 3,000 kilometres long and used 36,000 poles, placed at ‘20 to the mile’. It crossed Aboriginal lands first seen by Australia’s greatest explorer, John McDouall Stuart, just ten years earlier. The line passed through eleven new repeater stations and the remotest parts of Australia.

“But it might have all been very different,” notes Twenty to the Mile director Andrew Hyde. “Completion to build the telegraph line was fierce. Queensland had already invested substantially in a proposal to run the line from Java to Normanton, on the Gulf of Carpentaria. This was a shorter route. Had the Queensland plan succeeded, the history of the Northern Territory would be vastly different. In 1872, the emergence of Darwin, Katherine, Tennant Creek, and Alice Springs was by no means a certainty. The map of modern Australia might have been shaped very differently.”

In this feature length documentary, Derek Pugh takes a journey across the entire length of the original line, as he researches his fifteenth book on Northern Territory history. Produced by NT-based productions companies Exposure Productions and TV Works, Twenty to the Mile explores all facets of life on the line and the enormous impact its arrival had on First Nations Australians.

“The Overland telegraph Line changed Australia forever but it’s also a uniquely Northern Territory story” says Executive Producer Jennifer Richards. “Our production team was fully Territorian, and this highlights the dramatic growth of the local screen industry and the vibrancy of NT stories.”

“We can’t wait to take this to a larger audience.”