Yam Creek Telegraph Station
Deep in the bush in Kungarakany Country, some 250 km south of Darwin, runs Yam Creek. It was here the first telegraph repeater station south of Darwin was built in 1871. Originally little more than a tent under a shackle on the line, Yam Creek was eventually to host a hotel, the Gold Warden’s Office and even a miners’ hospital.
In the first few months of the OTL’s construction, working parties harvested cypress pine poles from the bush and passed through this valley, erecting their poles in 1.2-meter holes. They were exciting times – the workers pulled gold nuggets from the holes and by 1872-3 the Northern Territory’s gold rush had begun. The Shackle became an important communications centre for the miners and woe betide any operator who was away from his station when there was urgent business to do.
There are few signs of the village in the bush these days, but visitors will find building sites, pieces of old metal, broken bottles by the thousand, and the old well, still serviceable, down by the creek. A keen observer may find the stumps of the old telegraph poles, grey and weathered, marking where the line passed through.
To get there turn east off the Stuart Highway on the Grove Hill Road. Drive about 2 km, and the Shackle site is on the left just before you cross Yam Creek. There is a small white interpretation sign. Map reference 13°34’33”S, 131°30’59”E.
Challenges
Building the Overland Telegraph presented many challenges:
- The chosen route to the north coast was little known - only one small party had ever travelled it before, in 1862
- The timescale was very short (18 months) and inter-colonial rivalry meant that Queensland was keen to steal the project if South Australia failed to deliver. There was also great commercial pressure from the cable companies who supplied the undersea connection to the international telegraph network via Java, Singapore and India and ultimately to London.
- Most of the specialised telegraph materials had to be imported from Europe
- Transport was slow – bullock teams, horses and camels were the only land vehicles, and a mix of steam and sailing ships carried the heavy materials the long way around the coast to the Port Darwin end. Until the project was completed, communications had to rely on the same slow rate of travel – at least 3 weeks one way from Adelaide to Port Darwin by ship.
- Permanent telegraph station buildings had to be constructed at 300 km intervals to house the telegraph repeater equipment and staff. This quickly became a 24/7 operation.
- Repairs were needed when floods, lightning or termites damaged the single fragile wire that carried all the telegraph traffic.
