Todd's Adelaide Preview

Arrival in Australia

In February 1855, Charles Todd, manager at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London, was offered the job of “Astronomical and Meteorological Observer and Head of the Electric Telegraph Department in South Australia”. He accepted only after asking Alice Bell to marry him. He was 28, she was 18. With his landing in November 1855, the young colonies of Australia acquired the services of one of their best science and technology pioneers. Todd was about to start an illustrious 50 year career that would change Australia.

The Royal Observatory (Greenwich, England) was at the forefront of scientific research. Todd worked and trained there to be an astronomer, meteorologist, a telegrapher and an electrician, skills that were essential to the sciences of the time. He was at the top of his field, learning from some of the best minds of his generation. Arriving in the new colony of South Australia at age 29, he had a blank canvas where he spent over 40 years experimenting with and implementing the latest science and technology.

Overland Telegraph

Todd is best known for his work with the telegraph, putting in the first government telegraph to Port Adelaide in 1856, then a line to Gawler. He worked with Victoria to complete the remaining section of a line to Melbourne which was soon connected to Sydney. Messages that had taken days to arrive, now took only minutes.

In 1872 Todd gained international fame for supervising the building of the Overland Telegraph which connected Australia to the global telegraph system. He helped revolutionise communication in his time.

Retirement

On his retirement 5 years after the federation of Australia, Todd was the new country’s longest serving official meteorologist, astronomer, electrical engineer, postmaster and telecommunications person. He also had career highlights in surveying, telephony, horology and electric lighting and was Australia’s longest serving senior public servant.

He was a member of many Parliamentary, university and cultural and scientific committees. He was a giant of colonial history.

Postal Service

A formal postal service was one of the first public facilities started in SA in April 1837, 4 months after Europeans arrived. So important was post that it was established before a police service. Though Todd was the 4th Postmaster-General of South Australia, appointed in 1870, he went on to be the longest serving head of any postal service in all the Colonies of Australia. He helped set the foundations of the Australian Postal system established in 1901.

A newspaper article stated the postal service lurched from crisis to crisis. But criminals were responsible for changing this situation. In colonial times, the post handled relatively large amounts of money as it carried payments by citizens and businesses (there was no electronic cash!). Two postal robberies forced Todd to act. He re-organised the service, making it modern and efficient.He was so successful that by Federation, the SA postal service was the only one making a profit in the Colonies.

Postal Staff

Postal staff worked hard. One letter carrier, William Chapman, claimed that in 21 years of work he had never had a week off. Staff at the Letter
Branch only had 2 days off per year, Good Friday and Christmas Day.

When Todd retired, he was running a post office that had 1700 employees and 700 post offices which is bigger than Australia Post’s current operation
in the State. Todd also ran the telephone service located in the GPO.

Stamps

Most South Australian postage stamps of Todd’s time had an image of the British Queen Victoria. However, one stamp was unique. It was the half penny green which was the first stamp in the world to have an image of a post office, the Adelaide General Post Office (GPO).

Over 3 decades, Todd attended virtually every Inter-Colonial Postal Conference. He took part in all the major decisions that established the
Commonwealth post office. Despite this, there is not one Australian stamp that has his image on it.

The Post Office Building

Opened in 1872 the GPO was the most imposing public building after Parliament House. Its prominence illustrates the importance of the post office to the citizens of Todd's time. Other than talking to each other face to face, the writing and delivery of letters was the only method of communication between two people. It is ironic that, with his involvement in the telegraph, he helped start the electronic revolution that today is making the delivery of letters a relic of another time.

Postmaster General

When Todd was appointed Postmaster-General, he had just started supervising the building of the Overland Telegraph, a massive undertaking. Along with the postal service, he was possibly the busiest administrator in the colony with over 1000 people in his charge. At 47 years of age we can only speculate what time he had to spend with his family of 6 children.

Later in this tour you will learn just how busy Todd was in both the professional and public life of the Colony.

His success in so many endeavours resulted from his endless energy and his management style. He attracted strong loyalty from his staff and appointed capable managers. The Post Office staff showed their esteem by holding a banquet for him and donating the portrait painting of him which until late 2016 hung in the main hall of the GPO.

Todd was always affable and courteous. He was also an incorrigible joker and had the nickname, “The Punmaster General”. When lobbied by the citizens of Orroroo for a post office, his retort was that he saw no need for a post office in a town that had only two letters. At Federation in 1901, though Todd was the senior postal Administrator, he was too old to apply for the head of the Federal postal service. He continued as the Deputy Postmaster-General in South Australia until he retired in 1905 at the age of 78.

John McDouall Stuart

You are near the statue of John McDouall Stuart. Please take the time to read the inscription. In 1861-2 he completed the first return north-south crossing of the Australian continent. This heroic journey blazed the trail for the Overland Telegraph, when a mere 10 years later Charles Todd managed the building of Australia’s first electrical connection to the world.

Telegraph Route

The telegraph route was split into 3 sections; the southern section from Port Augusta to Treuer River, the central to Tennant Creek and the northern to Darwin. Todd engaged John Ross to determine the route of the telegraph through the central section. Its 5 sub-sections were each supervised by a Government Surveyor aided by an assistant Surveyor and a Junior or Cadet. Many of the officers came from the Survey Department, most having been trained by noted Surveyor-General George Goyder. Ross and his team followed Stuart's tracks as close as possible but had to deviate in the MacDonnell Ranges. During the survey, the Todd River was named, and Simpson Gap and the Alice Springs (named for Mrs Todd) were discovered and mapped.

Magnitude

To get some idea of the magnitude of the Overland Telegraph, it was a further 110 years before the first sealed road connected Adelaide and Darwin and another 22 years before the first train from Adelaide finally arrived. Camels transported equipment for the early parts of the first train tracks which roughly followed the telegraph line. Today’s north-south passenger train is called “The Ghan” in tribute to the work of the Afghan cameleers.

You can find more information on John McDouall Stuart by clicking this Wikipedia link.

Pilgrim Church

You should now be near the back of Pilgrim Church. Charles Todd was a member of the committee that raised the funds required to build this church in 1867, at the time called the Stow Congregational Church. Churches were imposing buildings in the city and used as meeting places for Adelaide’s powerful families. Office buildings now dominate and largely obscure these centres of early colonial life. Almost everyone attended church.

Church Hall

The old hall behind the Stow Memorial Church was once part of the Pirie Street Methodist Church which was demolished in the 1970’s. Two churches so close together illustrate why Adelaide became known as the “City of Churches”. While both churches practiced similar forms of Protestant Christianity, they stayed separate for more than 100 years. Following their amalgamation in 1972, they became the Pilgrim Uniting Church. The original Pirie St church was demolished for Council Offices.

Brougham Place Congregational Church

Todd was also a founding member of the Brougham Place Congregational Church in North Adelaide. Its first minister was James Jeffries, credited with the vision to establish the University of Adelaide, an institution Todd was also involved with.

RiAus

The red brick building near you is the old Adelaide Stock Exchange, a place where company shares were once traded. It is now the offices of the Royal Institution of Australia (RiAus) which is a sister organisation of the Royal Institution of Great Britain (Ri) which for 200 years was a centre of scientific research and communication. Todd became a Fellow of the Ri in 1889. One reason the Ri decided to establish their first overseas office in Adelaide relates to Todd's extended family.

The Braggs

Todd’s daughter Gwendoline married William H Bragg. He, together with son Lawrence, became the only father/son pair to win a Nobel Prize. The prize recognised their work in Physics. Both Braggs served as presidents of the Royal Society in London and it was this connection that brought RiAus to Adelaide. It is remarkable that Todd’s descendants should be the reason for a famous science institute coming to Adelaide. Lawrence Bragg struggled for many years for full recognition of his work because the English establishment could not believe that a young colonial from Adelaide could have made such a breakthrough discovery in science. His law is very relevant today as it helps the Mars Curiosity Rover analyse Martian soil.

Bragg's Law

Play the video above - it explains Bragg's Law. When x-rays are beamed into a crystal, they are diffracted at differing frequencies and angles. Todd's grandson Lawrence Bragg devised a mathematical equation to analyse these movements. Known as Bragg's Law, it can be used to analyse the structure of crystals. Since many materials can form crystals, Bragg’s Law is fundamental to the study of metals, salts and other inorganic molecules. It also reveals the structure and function of biological molecules such as drugs, proteins and nucleic acids like DNA. Importantly it is the basis for the design of pharmaceuticals to fight diseases.

South Australian Register

Close to where you are standing now was the site of the offices of the South Australian Register, SA's main 'colonial era' newspaper. It was in this newspaper that Todd regularly published his weather synopses and forecasts. Play the video to learn more about the fascinating and inspirational Todd's pioneering work in meteorology and/or view the images above that are extracted from the video.

Government Meteorologist

Todd was the first person in Australia to be appointed to the position of government meteorologist. Within a year of his arrival in 1855, he published a plan to establish a continent wide weather observation network. With the connection of the colonies by telegraph 25 years later, he realised his dream as weather observations were collected from all over Australia and New Zealand. With these, he was able to create, at the Observatory on West Terrace, world class weather maps covering an area bigger than any others in the world.

Forecasting

Observing weather was one thing, forecasting it was a different matter. The colonies of Victoria and NSW issued daily forecasts, much of it based on the weather coming through South Australia. But Todd was reluctant to do the same because much of SA's weather comes from the Great Australian Bight where there were no weather observers. Reluctantly, on 20th September 1888 he published his first public weather forecast in the Register. Unlike today’s forecasts, however, it was general in nature with no temperature forecast.

Few people realise that Adelaide had to wait another 69 years before the first temperature forecast was issued on the 11 May, 1957. And that was only for the next day. We now expect 7-day temperature forecasts which started in South Australia in 2011. Todd was the first to suggest that weather in Australia proceeds from west to east. Early settlers believed it went the other way. One of Todd’s assistants speculated that this belief may have occurred because NSW and Victoria were considered to be more important than SA and WA!

Todd's Weather Folios

Todd recorded Australia’s colonial weather in large folios. Recently re-discovered, they provide a trove of lost weather data. Volunteers have recorded much of it and the data now resides in the global weather history database. Weather history is an important part of climate change analysis. Todd’s dedication to recording data 140 years ago is now providing some of the backward perspective being used by researchers to analyse climate change into the future.

Adelaide

The street on which you are standing was set out by a surveyor. In early 1837, the colony's first Surveyor-General, Colonel William Light, and his survey parties were hard at work pegging Adelaide's town acres for the recently arrived (and very impatient) first settlers. Grenfell Street was established during this period. Light's streets and squares and parklands continue to underpin the congenial urban environment for which Adelaide is known. A surveyors' legacy is one that persists.

Harry's Bar

Can you find 'Harry's Bar'?

This site was originally occupied by the building known as Grenfell Chambers. Its tenants included Sanders & Packard, Licensed Surveyors, Auctioneers, Land Brokers, Agents, and Valuators. In December 1882, Sanders & Packard hosted a meeting to establish the South Australian Institute of Surveyors. The meeting elected Charles Todd as inaugural President, a position that he retained until 1888. Todd chaired the first meeting of the new Institute's council in the same offices on 10 January, 1883. One of the Institute’s first actions was to seek the establishment of a Board of Examiners to recommend the issue of Surveyors’ Licences to cover legal surveys. With the joint support of Todd and Surveyor General George Goyder, the Licensed Surveyors Act was proclaimed in 1886. Candidates for Licences were examined in mathematics, survey instruments, drawing, the field practice of land surveying, and astronomy.

Todd continued to set and mark the astronomy exam papers until his retirement in 1905.

Surveying Today

Land surveying is the measurement and mapping of the surrounding environment. Land surveyors are very important to our society. Without surveyors, we would not know where to locate our roads or position our land boundaries. Surveying technology has changed enormously since Todd's day. GPS and integrated systems have long replaced astronomy, theodolites and chains. Not everything has changed however. The principles of positioning remain the same.

The Adelaide Telegraph Office

The Adelaide telegraph office used to be near here. It was in Green's Exchange shown in the firsdt photo above as the two storey building with its criss-crossed timber balcony until it was moved into the GPO Building in 1872. It was from here that many telegrams were sent and received to all parts of the world by Morse Code.

Morse Code

Play the video above to hear some morse code.

The telegraph used short and long electrical pulses to transmit information in a code. Best known is the Morse Code. Each character was a group of
short and long sounds ("dots" and "dashes"). The South Australian Government's first telegraph line was opened between Adelaide and Port Adelaide in 1856. In the next 20 years Todd was instrumental in building an Australian network connecting the east coast with the west, the south coast with the north.

Overland Telegraph

Todd’s greatest achievement was the conception and building the Overland Telegraph which connected Australia with the world in 1872. It was the
largest infrastructure project of 19th Century Australia. In 18 months, at a cost today of $56 million, 500 workers installed 3600 km of wire and poles in unexplored country. Twelve repeater stations were built, some becoming towns including Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Katherine and Daly Waters.

Telegrams

The dots and dashes of the morse code transmission were converted into handwritten text by telegraph station operators to produce a short message.

Telegrams overseas were not cheap. One year after the line opened, it cost over 2 pounds for a 2 word message ($160 today). That was more than a week’s wage for the average worker in 1873. For businesses, it was worth the expense to get almost instant contact. To get a reply by snail mail took at least a third of a year for a reply. Adelaide became the “breaking news centre” of Australia.

Todd ran the telegraph department for 50 years. By 1885 the department was handling 670,000 telegrams a year of which 7% were international. The 200 telegraph offices in the Colony became the backbone of government and commercial communication and carried the important private messages of the citizens. 1963 was the year the last telegram was sent by telegraph line in Australia.

Families dreaded one telegram. During wars, the Government would tell them about the death of a family member by telegram.

Australia's love for communication technology

The tyranny of distance was a fact of life for Australians in Todd’s time. In 1877 a population half the size of modern Sydney was dispersed across a continent the size of the United States. International contact was only possible via slow ships.

By 1900, Australians were one of the world's largest users of the telegraph. Our early love for communication technology was evident in the use of the national telegraph network that Todd fostered over 40 years. In Central Australia, on the evening that the Overland Telegraph was completed, Todd slung the contacts of his portable telegraph key over the wires to send messages far and wide - he was texting his contacts with the following message.

"We have this day, within two years, completed a line of communication two thousand miles long through the very centre of Australia, until a few years ago a terra incognita believed to be a desert."​

The telegraph was just the start of an era of new communication systems. Telephone and wireless were to follow and Todd experimented with both. Progressively, the technologies that he championed and their modern versions, transformed the tyranny of distance into the global village. So important was the telegraph connection of Australia to the world that you would have seen a grand parade led by Todd pass by here on 15 November 1872 to celebrate the completion of the Overland Telegraph.

Controversy

However, the new technology was not without controversy. The public raised issues that continue to resonate today:

• Like social media, there was speculation that the telegraph might take over from other forms of communications like letter writing.
• Like SMS, short words were invented to reduce the length of a message (see the photo above).
• Like mobile phone plans, there were complaints about the cost of using the telegraph.
• Like the Internet, there was concern for increasing the speed and broadband capacity of the telegraph network.
• Like the National Broadband Network (NBN), there were complaints that the cost of the telegraph network would never be recovered.
• Like many social commentators of today, there were concerns about a digital divide where only the wealthy would have access to the telegraph.

However there was also an upside.​

• Like Twitter, the telegraph dramatically increased how quickly the news was communicated.
• Like the Internet, there were predictions that the telegraph would reduce the cost of goods for consumers.

Don’t they say, “history repeats itself”?

Time had no standard

In the 19th century, there was no Standard Time - each city had its own local time. When the sun was at its highest point, it was 12 noon. In 1854, the SA Government which resided in the building in front of you, ordered a precision astronomical instrument which could be used to establish the correct time. They also needed a trained astronomer to make these readings.

The man chosen was 28-year-old Charles Todd.

Timeballs

At Greenwich, Charles Todd had been responsible for a system of signalling the time by raising and dropping a timeball at precisely one o'clock. The telegraph line Todd built to Port Adelaide in 1856 could have been used to drop a timeball. However, one was not erected until 1875. It was placed, not at the Port, but on the coast at Semaphore where ships anchored in the Gulf.

You can still see part of the timeball tower at Semaphore Beach today.

Town Hall clock

In 1866, Todd planned a system of electric clocks for old Parliament House - where you are now. They took 18 months to arrive from England and were synchronised to a master clock at the Observatory.

The Adelaide GPO had the most prominent clock in the city and the tower was 48 metres tall so it could be easily seen. The clock, made in England, was installed in 1875 and Todd himself put the parts together. It first chimed on 13 December 1875 and sounds like the famous Big Ben bell that chimes the hour in London, England.

Australian time zones

In the 1890s, countries adopted standard times with 24 zones, each an hour apart. Australia would have three zones - 8, 9 and 10 hours ahead of GMT. Charles Todd put the case for one time zone - GMT +9 hours - for consistent telegraph messages and railway timetables. In 1894 GMT +9 hours was set as the Standard for SA. In 1898 this was changed by half an hour (+9.5 hrs) to be closer to the eastern colonies.

Cultural Precinct

Todd played a significant role in the educational and cultural life of the Colony. This part of North Terrace is known as the "Cultural Precinct". It contains the Universities of Adelaide and South Australia, the Museum, the Art Gallery and the State Library. Todd helped establish then served on the Boards of all these institutions and was also on the Executives of the Philosophical Society and the Literary and Debating Societies. With 44 years on the Library Board, he holds the record as its longest serving member.

Social networking 19C style

Like today, Colonial citizens exchanged personal and professional news and swapped gossip and opinions. Just as we might use facebook, instagram and texting, 19th century people relied on face to face conversation,letter writing and newspapers. Affinity groups were just as important then as they are now. Where we join web groups to discuss our favourite topics, Todd’s contemporaries joined music, debating and literary societies for monthly recitals and conversation.

Knighthood

Charles Todd became Sir Charles Todd when he received a knighthood from the Queen in 1893. As one of Adelaide’s senior Public Servants, Todd served under 22 different Premiers between 1856 and 1907. He was a frequent visitor to Parliament. In 1891 he was one of four who served on a Government Board to advise on an 8 hour day in the public service. Parliament legislated the retirement of public servants at age 70, but they set it aside to recognise Todd's seniority. It allowed him to decide his own retirement at age 80.

Football

Todd was interested in sports. He was a long serving member of the SA Cricketing Association and was involved in the early days of the Adelaide Oval. He was also a Vice President of the SA Football Association. In July 1879, he was part of the welcoming party for the visit of the Geelong Football team. In four days, Geelong was victorious in all 3 games against Port, Norwood and a combined SA team. The home teams managed a total of 1 goal to Geelong’s 15!

Some rivalries are endless.

The Institute Building

In October 1860, Charles Todd gave the first demonstration of electric light in Adelaide using an arc lamp. Look across Kintore Avenue toward the Institute Building opposite. He showed the lamp again at the opening of this building in 1867. In the 1860s he used batteries and in 1881 he had a lamp powered by a dynamo (generator). By giving these demonstrations, Todd was able to persuadeAdelaide to adopt this new form of lighting.

North Terrace and the GPO

In 1882 Todd urged that electric light be used in the public buildings along North Terrace. He’d seen lighting installations and given demonstrations. The Government, however, was slow to adopt new technology. In 1885 Todd had a light installed on the GPO to provide warning of a Russian invasion (it didn’t happen). He was also in charge of the electric torpedoes (mines) protecting Port Adelaide.

Adelaide Oval and Parliament House

The first night football match was played on Adelaide Oval on 1 July 1885. It used the generator from the GPO. In 1887 Adelaide was the first Australian city to light its Exhibition with electricity. When a School of Mines & Industries was later set up, it ran - on Todd’s recommendation - the first Adelaide course in electrical engineering.

In 1890, Todd was put in charge of the project to light Parliament House with electricity. The lighting was trialed in June 1891. Two years later Todd’s own GPO finally had electric light. Having been its champion for 37 years, Todd could now let electric light become the work of others - including his son, Hedley.

State Border

The province of South Australia was created by Royal Decree in 1834. The Decree defined the province’s eastern border as being meridian of longitude 141° East. Between 1839 and 1850, surveys were undertaken to physically mark the portion of the border south of the River Murray. Unfortunately, the absence of adequate time-transfer technology (essential for the accurate determination of longitude) led to the border being marked in the wrong position. By 1860, the error was strongly suspected.

Goyder

Can you find Goyder's plaque in the Jubilee 150 pavement along North Terrace?

In 1867, following completion of the electric telegraph between Adelaide and Sydney, Surveyor-General George Goyder approached Todd to assist with a fresh determination of the 141st meridian. They realised that a major improvement in meridian accuracy could be achieved if the telegraph (which ran close to the River Murray) was used to carry time signals from observatories in Sydney and Melbourne.

The 141st meridian

On Friday, 1 May 1868, Todd arrived at Chowilla on the River Murray. His party established a temporary astronomical observatory near Lake Littra, and connected to the telegraph line. During the next two weeks, astronomic observations, including time-transfers, were simultaneously undertaken at the temporary observatory and at the observatories in Sydney or Melbourne.

Todd proved that the marked border between South Australia and Victoria was too far west by at least 3.6 km, sparking a legal battle between the two States. Eventually, in 1914, the High Court of Australia ruled that the surveyors' marks constituted the boundary, and the fact that it did not exactly coincide with the 141st meridian did not warrant the re-adjustment claimed by South Australia. An obelisk (see photo above) was erected near the bank of the Murray to permanently mark the meridian's position.

Observatory

You are standing close to what was once an astronomical observatory with its round dome. Astronomers were important in colonial Australia. They answered 2 questions “Where am I?” and “What time is it?” Using telescopes to trace the movements of stars, the moon and sun, astronomers were able to determine their exact location. Todd used these techniques to establish precise position in his work, most notably for the telegraph. It was also important in meteorology to establish the exact place on a synoptic chart to place the weather observations and thus draw a weather map.

Timekeeper

Once you know where you are, you can again use stars to determine the exact time. This required a trained astronomer to make the readings. Charles Todd took on the role of Adelaide’s time keeper. He did daily observations with a large “transit” telescope to determine the exact time in Adelaide. Todd’s telescope-based time system was phased out in 1954. It was replaced with another central time source, but one that is global. Called Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), it is based on International Atomic Time (IAT) which counts seconds using atomic clocks around the world.

Nowhere was time more important than on the sailing ships. To avoid being wrecked by hidden reefs and rocks, a Captain had to know where his ship was in the middle of a featureless ocean. Navigators used a sextant to observe the sun, moon and stars. In combination with accurate time provided by a chronometer (clock), they could determine their exact location.

GPS

We no longer rely on the sun, moon and stars to tell us where we are. However our modern ‘geo-location’ systems still look to the skies. GPS (global positioning systems) can now determine the position of an object with an accuracy of 6 meters on an earth surface of 510 million square kilometres! Instead of using the position of the stars, GPS scans satellites that circle the earth.

Adelaide Observatory​
Todd served on the Board of the University of Adelaide which met in the Mitchell Building where you are now.Todd’s Adelaide Observatory was built in 1852 on West Terrace where Adelaide High School now stands. As a centre of scientific activities, it not only had telescopes, it kept a time service, measured earth tremors and was the site of the first wireless signal in the Colony. Many observations of astronomical and meteorological phenomenon were done there. Some of Todd’s telescopes are now housed at Adelaide University. There is a monument depicting the site of observatory on West Terrace. ​It is fitting that this NW corner of Adelaide is our 21st Century science precinct.

Transit of Venus
Determining the time it took for the planet Venus to cross the face of the sun gave astronomers the information they needed to calculate the size of the solar system. These “Transits of Venus” occur in pairs about every 121 years. The first attempt to use this method occurred in 1761. Todd was part of the world network that did further observations in 1874 and 1882. James Cook was tasked with observing the 1761 transit after which he explored the ‘new’ continent of Australia which led it to becoming an English colony.

Todd's Ideas
Todd's work in astronomy, starting at the age of 15 at the Greenwich Observatory as a ‘computer’ doing calculations that produced astronomical reference charts stayed at the centre of his working life and for 65 years it led him into his other accomplishments in telegraphy, surveying, meteorology and electrical engineering. Todd formed some far-sighted ideas that were radical in their day.

• He thought it very unwise and pretentious to say that life on earth is the only form of life in the universe.
• He did not believe the sun was at the centre of the universe and suggested that any central location was only transitory and with our current
  speed of movement we were most likely just passing through.
• He also believed that the Milky Way was only one of many galaxies.
• Todd was given his knighthood for a lifetime of astronomical work.

Jubilee 150 Plaque​

You should be very close to Todd’s plaque in the pavement - can you find it?

Many of the best known people of South Australia are commemorated in the Jubilee 150 walkway containing over 150 bronze plaques. Close by is the one for John McDouall Stuart, the leader of the first successful expedition to cross Australia and return. Todd could not have built the Overland Telegraph without Stuart’s amazing determination to cross the continent and Goyder’s attention to geographic detail.

In 1881, Adelaide region’s population was only 123,000 people, one tenth the size it is today. 99 of the 150 plaques are of people born between 1810 and 1840, roughly Todd’s working contemporaries. These people were the leaders of the Colony of South Australia and like Todd, Stuart and Goyder, most of them knew each other and worked together. In the length of a single lifetime, they laid the foundations of an advanced European society, giving us the doorway to our future.

Achievements in Todd's Time

We are the only State that didn’t start as a convict settlement. We actually started as a 'scientific experiment in colonisation', a concept that attracted innovative settlers like Todd.

During Todd’s time, we were the first in Australia to have:

• 1841 - the first mine for metal (silver and lead)
• 1856 - universal male voting (including Indigenous); secret ballot; 1 man/one vote
• 1876 - legalised trade unions
• 1878 - long-distance telephone calls
• 1881 - women admitted to university degrees
• 1882 - cement manufacturing at Brighton
• 1890 - a Juvenile Court
• 1895 - women permitted to vote AND stand for election
• 1906 - a licence to drive a motor vehicle

Todd's death

When Todd died in January 1910, aged 83, it was the norm for famous people to have a funeral ‘parade’ up the main street of Adelaide, King William Street. But Todd left specific instructions that he was not to have the parade as this would disrupt the normal life of the State.

The man’s humility was remarkable to the end. Many dignitaries turned out to his burial at the North Road Cemetery where his headstone can still be seen in a family plot beside his lifelong partner, Alice.