Etched in the history of this country, August 22, 1872 will forever be remembered as the day Australia was connected to the rest of the world.
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At the time, the population was a third of the size of today's modern Sydney, scattered across the continent. Mail sent overseas by ship took seven weeks to arrive in the UK.
But an almost impossible plan, hatched by a London-born son of a grocer and tea merchant, ended Australia's isolation in a historic moment.
Charles Todd
Arriving in Australia in search of adventure, fame and fortune, mathematical talent Charles Todd took up the position as Government Astronomer, after having worked at the Greenwich Observatory since the young age of 15.
But his real fascination didn't lay with the stars but with a newly emergent communications technology - the telegraph. Todd was fascinated by the potential of this new apparatus, and his ambition soon led him to link a wire from Adelaide to Port Adelaide, cutting information travel time from one day to one minute.
As early as 1856, long before he even arrived in Australia, Todd had the idea to build a telegraph line linking Adelaide to Darwin: A wire through the heart of the continent, connecting the south with the north and Australia with the world.
The technology
Based on a simple technology, the electric telegraph delivered Morse code messages over long distances with a technology originally based on wires, a power source and a light bulb.
By connecting a light bulb to a power source, interrupted by a simple switch, switching the light on and off will almost instantaneously create the ability to send Morse code messages.
And it was a single wire, on poles across the vast inland of Australia, that became the continent's first electric and digital connection with the world, having a dramatic impact on the economic and social fabric of the country that has only been replicated with the internet of the 20th century.
The wire through the heart
Overlooking the ambitious project to span an overland telegraph wire between South Australia and the Northern Territory, Todd divided the route for the line into three parts: the southern section from Port Augusta to Oodnadatta, a central section on to Roper River, and the northern section from the the Roper to Darwin.
Hailed as one of Australia's greatest ever engineering undertakings, materials for the construction were transported by bullocks and horse-drawn wagons.
Afghan cameleers were recruited to carry food and supplies along the central and southern sections.
Today's Ghan train line from Adelaide to Darwin is famously named after the first cameleers, and today's Central Australian camels are the offspring of the animals brought to Australia to support the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line.
With eleven repeater stations that were necessary to boost the strength of the electrical signal, the line featured 36,000 telegraph poles, each about 200 kilometres apart.
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While the southern and central sections were completed on time, the Northern Territory's wet season rains delayed the construction of the Overland Telegraph line in November 1870.
Concentrating his resources in the north, Todd finished the enormous undertaking at Frews Ponds, about 660km south of Darwin, connecting the wire from the south with the wire from the north on August 22, 1872.
Station masters based along the Overland Telegraph passed messages along the line in Morse code, covering 3,000km.
The messages
The joining of the wires allowed for messages to flow.
According to Darwin historian Derek Pugh, the very first message was keyed in Morse code in Palmerston.
It read:
"In the absence of the Government Resident, I have the honor to congratulate your Excellency on the completion and opening of the Overland Telegraph line. I trust this great undertaking will increase the trade, and develop the varied resources of the colony, and prove the pioneer of still greater works, uniting more firmly the various Australian colonies to each other and them to the mother country. God save the Queen!"
But it was Charles Todd's message that will forever be remembered as the defining moment in Australian history.
"We have this day, or within two years from the date it was commenced, completed a line of communications two thousand miles long through the very centre of Australia, until a few years ago a terra incognita believed to be a desert."
Breaking the isolation
Connected to a submarine cable, messages that used to take weeks or months, could now be transmitted within hours.
Opening up the heart of the continent, the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line was a defining moment for Australia.
Within a year of the connection of the line, gold was being mined in Pine Creek near Katherine, and within just ten years the northern cattle industry was established in an area previously thought to be nothing but a desert or a great inland sea.
Alice Springs, established as a Overland Telegraph Line repeater station, became a hub for Central Australia, and prospectors and graziers alike used the repeater stations along the line as regional centres.
150 years later
Celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Overland Telegraph Line this year, Derek Pugh, author of 'Twenty to the Mile', said the Overland Telegraph Line was 'the internet of the day', allowing rapid communication with the world.
"(The Overland Telegraph line) provided almost instant access to information and broke the tyranny of distance," Mr Pugh said.
"The Overland Telegraph Line (was) the greatest engineering success of the nineteenth century: one that allowed Australia to join the modern world".
Earlier this month the Royal Australian Mint announced it had released a commemorative coin, depicting the Overland Telegraph line.
On Monday, a 150th anniversary celebration will be held at the Sir Charles Todd Memorial near Frews Ponds where the wires were connected in 1872.