History Revisited - age of the telegram

GROUNDBREAKING TECHNOLOGY: Telegraph boys, Brisbane, 1870.  Armidale's own office opened in October 1861

As I indicated in my last column, the telegraph spread globally with quite remarkable speed. This was a case where technology directly coincided with an urgent unmet need for rapid communications.

The installation costs of the system on land were relatively low, facilitating rapid construction. Operating and maintenance costs were considerable, but these could be recovered from a marketplace eager for quick communication. The telegram was a classic example of a simple packaged high value product. Creation of undersea cables was expensive and more complex, but by then the demand was there to justify the costs and risks.

The first commercial telegraph system was installed on the Great Western Railway between London and Birmingham in 1837. On 1 May 1844, the first public telephone line between Baltimore and Washington DC opened. In Australia, the first Australian line between Melbourne and Williamtown opened in March 1854.

All the Australian colonies rapidly built lines. In 1858, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide were linked. In November 1861, the newly constructed NSW and Queensland lines met at the border, linking all the Eastern colonies.

Demand grew rapidly. New lines had to be added, while relatively small centres were quickly connected.

On the New England, telegraph offices were opened simultaneously on 1 October 1861 in Armidale, Glen Innes and Tenterfield as part of the opening of the progressive opening of the Northern Line. In 1869, a line to Port Macquarie was opened.

Older Armidalians will remember the telegram. It was so much part of or lives that is hard now to realise that our kids know nothing about it!

So, for the younger generation, telegrams were expensive. The cost of the telegram was based on the number or words, a sort of Twitter equivalent, so people kept their messages short.

The expense meant that, for the private person, telegrams were only sent on special occasions; marriages, deaths, anniversaries, congratulations and achievements,

I was in Hobart hitchhiking when my Leaving Certificate results came out. I went to the Hobart GPO to collect my mail, and there were all the telegraphs and other messages congratulating me. I took them back to the boarding house and read and reread the lot. I had no idea so many people were interested.

The link of the telegram with special news made their arrival a matter of great concern. So often, and especially during the two wars, their arrival meant the death of a loved one. A telegram carried fear.

Standing on their doorsteps, people ripped the envelope open to find the worst. The short clipped words carried a message that would change their lives forever. Distressed, they would carry the message indoors, trying to wok out what had to be done, what to do next.

Telegraph traffic peaked in 1945. Now a new competitor, the telephone, had become well entrenched. I will look at this in my next column. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 17 June 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History Revisited - changing the way the world communicates

TRAILBLAZING: Built from as early as 500 BC, the Roman Roads were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman State. 

If you are going to run an Empire, you need communications. The Romans had the Roman Roads, while Marco Polo’s Travels describe in almost breathless tones the extensive communications system in the Great Khan’s empire.

Using both runners and horses with posting stations spaced at regular intervals, messages could be transmitted across vast distances within the Mongol Empire at remarkable speed. So important was the system, that provincial or local rulers were required by law to maintain the physical and animal infrastructure and given tax concessions to encourage them to do so.  

In the case of the British Empire, you find the Red Route, the network of undersea telegraph cables linking British territories. Intended to protect imperial interests and promote imperial commerce, the Red Route spread rapidly to the point that British cable laying ships dominated the global trade.

Australians have recently been commemorating various events connected with the First World War. There has been little recognition in those commemorations of the importance of the Red Route. It gave the British and Commonwealth side secure global communications, while Germany and the other Central Powers found their global communications badly disrupted.

Looking back, there were many remarkable features about the global spread of telegraphy. The first was its sheer speed.

Many complex problems had to be resolved before messages could be transmitted, let alone transmitted economically across a vast global cable network.

The first working telegraph system was created in 1816. The first commercial telegraph system was installed on the Great Western Railway between London and Birmingham in 1837. The first undersea cable was laid in 1850 between France and England. The growing international cable system reached Australia in October 1872.

If you think about it, that’s very fast, just fifty six years from first commercial application to global transformation. Its about the same time from the invention of the Turing machine to the creation of the internet.

Telegraphy transformed to world. It reduced the time taken to get a message from England to remote Australia from many weeks to seven hours. It transformed industry and governance.

New industries were created, warfare was revolutionised. For the first time, a newspaper in Sydney or Armidale could get information on events as they happened, not events past.. For the first time, a government official could expect to assert direct immediate control over a far distant subordinate. Real centralisation was born.

The remote Australian colonies were early adopters of the new technology. In my next  column, I will look at this and the impact on New England.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 10 June 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History Revisited - life as postmaster in Armidale's early days

HISTORIC BUILDING: The current Armidale Post Office first became functional in 1880 under the watch of long-serving postmaster John Emblin.

Armidale’s first Post Office was established in March 1843. Armidale was less than four years old. That first Post Master, John Pattison, was entitled to a commission of 20% on postal charges, then one shilling and three pence for a letter to Sydney, plus an allowance of 30 shillings per year for lighting.

As the old currency system disappears in the mist of time, we forget the meaning of these old numbers. When decimal currency was introduced in 1966, one shillings and three pence was equivalent to 15 cents per letter, 30 shillings for lighting $3.

Those values came after years of inflation. Those early letters were very expensive, well beyond the reach of most people assuming they could in fact write.

By the time Armidale’s first Postmaster was appointed, the NSW mail service had been in existence for just under thirty years. On 25 April 1809 ex-convict Isaac Nichols was appointed first Postmaster for NSW.

Envelopes had not yet been invented. Early letters were sealed by folding, often with wax sealing the folds. Postal costs were paid by the receiver.

In 1838, two things happened. One was the start of the overland service from Sydney to the Port Philip settlement. The second was the invention of prepaid stamped letter sheets, a world first, allowing money to be collected from the sender. Some of those sheets carried the insignia Melbourne New South Wales!

In April 1840, the first overland mail arrived in Sydney from the Moreton Bay settlement in, the Sydney Herald Records, “the short space of thirty-nine days.” Ten years later came the first adhesive postage stamp.

Things weren’t always easy for Armidale’s first Postmasters. Money was short, and Government officials in Sydney were not inclined to spend it unless absolutely necessary.

In 1864, local member of Parliament Robert Forster wrote to the Minister for Finance complaining that it was painful to him to be constantly “reminding the Government of the fact that the Postmaster at Armidale, his Wife & 7 children are obliged to Eat, drink, Cook & Sleep in one small room.”

Things did improve. In 1880, long serving (and suffering) Postmaster John Emblin with his wife and multiple children was able to move into a brand new post office on the corner of Beardy and Faulkner Streets, While extended, the building was recognisably that we know today.

In 1889 there was another development. Following continuing complaints from Armidale residents, a second daily mail delivery was introduced to coincide with the arrival of the Northern (Queensland) mail train.

Hard to believe now that Armidale had two daily mail deliveries and that mail from Queensland was sufficiently important to warrant a second delivery.

You have to remember that Armidale families once had interconnections across Northern NSW into Queensland, that New England was once the centre of widespread pastoral enterprises extending into Queensland, that Queensland children came in numbers to Armidale schools.

It was a different world. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 3 June 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History Revisited - Aboriginal life intensifies across New England

HILLS AND PLAINS: From 6,000 years ago, the Aborigines had spread across all the broader New England coast, hills and plains

We know from the ethnographic record that the pattern of Aboriginal life across the broader New England on the dawn of invasion was varied and complex. The archaeological record suggests that this pattern began forming after sea levels stabilised around 6,000 years ago, with growth accelerating around 5,000 years ago.

New England’s history is dominated by geography. From east to west, the often narrow coastal strip ends in the rugged broken escarpments of those blue ranges that provide a constant visual backdrop to much of the coast. The New England Tablelands, the largest tablelands in Australia, declines to the west, becoming the Western Slopes and then falling away into the vast Western Plains.

Looking north-south, that pattern creates the broad zones we know today, coast, tablelands, slopes and plains, each marked by local variation.

Five thousand years ago, as today, travel was easier north-south than it was east-west. The Aborigines of the slopes and plains formed one very broad grouping, those on the coast another.

Petrology studies rocks. In early pioneering work, Ray Binns and Isabel McBryde used petrological analysis to trace Aboriginal ground-edge artefacts in multiple collections back to source. Their work revealed a widespread exchange network that carried artefacts from the stone quarry at Moore Creek near Tamworth north and especially west as far as the Darling River.

This was a remarkable result because of the distances involved, and suggesting that the patterns we know from ethnographic evidence formed early.

Binns and McBryde’s analysis also showed more limited exchange on the coast where suitable stone was widespread. However, there appeared to be almost no interconnection between either coast or Moore Creek and the Tablelands. Further, those major sites connected with the Tablelands such as Bendemeer or Graman are on the periphery.

So what, to use Iain Davidson phase, about that bit in the middle, the main Tablelands?

The evidence suggests that the Tablelands were a marchland area, with a relatively small resident population squeezed between the big coastal language groups whose territories extended into the headwaters of the coastal rivers and the large Kamilaroi language group extending along the Western Slopes.

Oral tradition, the ethnographic evidence and limited archaeological evidence all suggest seasonal movement between the coast and tablelands. Petrological evidence from the Salisbury Court axe factory shows a relatively limited local distribution, suggesting that it was important to a local resident group.

The central –southern Tablelands Nganyaywana (Anaiwan) language itself appears structurally related to the coastal languages, but is also very distinct, hinting that it diverged during a period of isolation.

One of the most interesting feature of the Tablelands is the presence of significant ceremonial sites, including the Serpentine stone arrangements p(icture). Some served local needs, but high country sites such as Serpentine clearly met broader needs.

There are hints in the evidence we have of the broader patterns that once existed. By combining all forms of evidence, we may yet be able to discover those patterns. It’s a tantalising prospect.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 27 May 2015. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.