PastMasters

Scottish Australian explorer John McDouall Stuart blazed the central route used for the Overland Telegraph Line after crossing the continent in 1862. The construction was championed and overseen by Superintendent of Telegraphs, Charles Todd (formerly an astronomer at the Royal Greenwich Observatory). Todd relied on Stuart’s maps to plan the line which followed old paths that Indigenous Australians had established thousands of years before.

In 1871, construction workers digging holes for the Overland Telegraph Line pylons discovered gold at Pine Creek, 240km south of Darwin, sparking a gold rush. Much of the gold was embedded in rock which required laborious crushing using heavy stamp batteries, and hundreds of Chinese workers were brought in to work the mines. By 1885, Chinese made up the vast majority of the mining population in the area, with many engaged as businessmen and merchants. By the 1890s, many had returned to China. The first really significant find of gold was at Yam Creek and named “Priscilla”. It was two miles long and witnesses reported the precious metal being visible to the naked eye for two hundred yards. Images show the first telegraph pole being laid, the miner’s hospital at Yam Creek, and a Chinese hut in 1923.