COMMUNICATIONS IN AUSTRALIA

  THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNICATIONS IN AUSTRALIA

By Frances Harris



25^th April 1770, the first recorded communications system in Australia was listed in the logs of the HMS Endeavour, first noted by naturalist Joseph Banks off the coast of new South Wales. Captain Cook wrote that fires sited along the coast were cooking fires tended by the local aborigines. They were later found to be signalling fires informing other tribes that there were strangers in the area. The succession of fires was a very effective and fast moving means of alerting tribes ahead that a ship filled with strangers was on its way.

The first fleet landing in 1788, resulting in a fledgling British penal colony at Botany Bay made up of 759 convicts and nearly as many military warders, was isolated and fairly detached from the homeland. Even in a time of near starvation, after the sinking of their supply ship Guardian, there were few ships travelling between Australia and England which made it difficult to get word out in time to avert a tragedy. It took two years before the Governor received a reply to his dispatch to England.

The initial planning for the colony was purposely meant to foster trade and to isolate the undesirables. When the convicts ended their sentences, it was intended they would not be easily able to find their way back to England. In 1790 when the Lady Juliana carrying mail from home arrived with the second fleet, people went wild trying to get their letters and parcels from the ship. It was recorded that the recipients  ripped open their mail with trembling hands. In Tasmania the local postmaster arranged for open letter bags to be placed near ships to be filled by anyone who wanted to communicate with their home country. Incoming mail was advertised in the Hobart Town Gazette.

Other colonies launched their postal services promptly and by December 1829, Western Australia had a sound postal delivery established five months after settlement. Post Masters earned their money applying levies to incoming mail, but soon found that most of the services were unprofitable. There was always the entrepreneur looking for other ways to cash in.

As the postal service developed, and the squatters moved further inland from the east coast, mail was carried by the postman on foot, on horseback, on carts and sailing ships to assigned destinations. The gold rushes and opening of sea ports saw the expansion of the postal services around the coast and drove them deeper inland, but the system was stretched to breaking point. Postal addresses were included in isolated gullies and out of the way places. One of the major drawbacks for the communications systems in Australia was the problem of illiteracy. Much of the wider population was unable to read, spell, or write coherently. So if communications were sent, there had to be someone at the other end to read it and be able to respond.

By the 1850’s, as the diggers of New South Wales and down south moved further inland, so did the telegraph poles and lines. In 1872 the telegraph cable arrived from Europe and Asia. The overland wire continued its installation southwards until Darwin was linked with the southern cities. Progressively layers of new technologies went on to enhance the old communication systems, like Morse Code, the telegram, telex, coaxial cable, STD phones. Satellite has seen an array of new communications systems cascade across Australia and the world until we now have extensive  social and business networks supported with Wifi, and are steadily taking over from fixed line phones and cables.

So what’s next? Maybe tele-transportation, or a direct line to the stratosphere. It will be interesting to see.