Listen to an ABC podcast on Conversations with Richard Fidler
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/overland-telegraph-line-nt-charles-todd-derek-pugh/13793392


Twenty to the Mile:
THE OVERLAND TELEGRAPH LINE.

The greatest engineering feat of 19th century Australia

The greatest engineering problem facing Australia – the tyranny of distance – had a solution: the electric telegraph, and its champion was the sheep-farming state of South Australia.
In two years, Charles Todd, leading hundreds of men, constructed a telegraph line across the centre of the continent from Port Augusta to Port Darwin. At nearly 3,000 kilometres long and using 36,000 poles at ’20 to the mile’, it was a mammoth undertaking but in October 1872, Adelaide was finally linked to London.
The Overland Telegraph Line crossed Aboriginal lands first seen by John McDouall Stuart just 10 years before. Messages which previously took weeks to cross the country now took hours. Passing through eleven new repeater stations and the remotest parts of Australia, the line joined the vast global telegraph network, and a new era was ushered in.
Each station held a staff of six. They became centres of white civilization and the cattle or sheep industry. In many places the local Aborigines were displaced.
The unique stories of how men and women lived and/or died on the line range from heroic through desperate, to tragic, but they remain an indelible part of Australia’s history.

… a book written with heart and admiration… a lasting tribute to the inventiveness and tenacity of the people behind the planning, building and execution of the Overland Telegraph – a true nation building endeavour (His Excellency, The Honourable Hieu Van Le AC).

​email now for informaton: derekpugh1@gmail.com

MEDIA RELEASE 
 
These days, computers and mobile devices keep us in touch with each other as never before, and news and information is instantly available. Australia no longer suffers the ‘tyranny of distance’, but it was very different in colonial Australia. Months would pass before letters could be answered and international news was always old when it was finally printed in the papers.

This all changed after the completion of the greatest engineering feat of the 19th century. In 1872, the Overland Telegraph Line connected Adelaide to London, and communication channels were open.
But first, the tiny colony of Palmerston, now called Darwin, needed to be connected to the world’s telegraph system by an undersea cable. This was pulled on shore by men and horses on 7 November 1871, 150 years ago.

The first telegram to Australia arrived 12 days later, on 19 November 1871. The Morse code message was tapped out by Captain Robert Halpin after he and a fleet of three ships laid the cable on the sea floor between Port Darwin and Banyuwangi in Java. Proudly written, our first electric communication simply ended with “Advance Australia”

Darwin historian Derek Pugh said “the OTL was the internet of the day, allowing rapid communication with the world. It provided almost instant access to information and broke the tyranny of distance. The arrival of the international cable was the first step of this huge technological leap”.
The incredible story of the OTL is told in Pugh’s new book Twenty to the Mile: The Overland Telegraph Line.

Available now, cost $39.95 plus postage.
​Wholesale distribution by Woodslane.

For more information on the 2022 sequicentenary celebrations of the OTL see https://ot150.net
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***Shortlisted for the NT Chief Minister's History Award 2021
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PORT ESSINGTON:
​The British in North Australia 1838-49

For many of the Royal Marines sent to Port Essington, life was a living hell of malaria, scurvy, termites, shipwrecks, cyclones, boredom, isolation, and death. For one man it was the ‘most useless, miserable, ill-managed hole in Her Majesty’s dominions’ which deserved ‘all the abuse that has ever been heaped upon it’.

But it wasn’t always so: In the beginning, French visitors shared their best Bordeaux wines and partied at Government House; small boats raced in regattas across the harbour; men played cricket; and the gardens grew the best pineapples in the southern hemisphere.

Led by the stoic Captain John McArthur for 11 years, this is the story of the rise and fall of a peaceful little British village in the most distant part of the empire, and of how the chief occupation of the survivors became grave digging.

‘a splendid read full of heartbreak, hope, despair, ambition and resilience’ (Tom Pauling AO QC).

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FORT WELLINGTON:
:​The British in North Australia 1827-29

​The Iwaidja woman, her belly opened by a bayonet, slipped below the dark water. Her 6-year-old daughter, Reveral, watched in terror. Her baby sister was already dead, hit by a slug in the first volley or drowned, but a young man lying on the sand with his intestines spilling out had to be finished off - out of mercy! Reveral, wounded in her side, was carried back to the fort in triumph, for she was worth a £5 reward from Commandant Smyth.
Capturing an Australian was how the British sought to make friends with the Iwaidja, on whose lands the new British garrison of Fort Wellington was being built. It was an appalling start, but eventually, with the remarkable Captain Collet Barker in charge, friendships were established. At last, it looked like a successful trading settlement would follow, the British would live in peace with the local tribe and they would welcome and protect the Macassan fishermen who came annually to the peninsula for trepang.
But then, a ship-wrecked captain arrived with the order to abandon the north coast altogether and the soldiers, Royal Marines, convicts, their families, and even Reveral herself, wearily packed up the settlement and moved on, leaving the fort and its gardens to the Iwaidja.
This is the extraordinary forgotten story of the second attempt at settling Australia’s north coast. With forewords by the Honourable Austin Asche AC QC, 13th Administrator of the Northern Territory, and Dr Brian Reid, HSNT.
‘an absorbing and detailed narrative’ (Brian Reid).
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​FORT DUNDAS:
The British in North Australia 1824-29

Fort Dundas was the first outpost of Europeans in Australia’s north. It was a British fortification manned in 1824, by soldiers, marines and convicts, and built by them on remote Melville Island. The fort lasted until February, 1829, when it was abandoned and left to the termites.
 
The fort’s purpose was twofold. First, it was a physical demonstration of Britain’s claim to the New Holland continent as far as longitude 129°E that excluded the Dutch and the French from starting similar colonies, and it was the first of a series of fortified locations around the coast. Second, it was promoted as the start of a British trading post that would become a second Singapore and compete with Batavia.
 
The settlement was named in a ceremony on 21 October 1824 but it was not a success. In its short existence, we have tales of great privation, survival, greed, piracy, slavery, murder, kidnapping, scurvy, and battles with the Indigenous inhabitants of the islands, the Tiwi. It was also the site of the first European wedding and the birth of the first European children in northern Australia.
 
None of the three military commandants who managed the outpost wanted to be there and all were gratefully relieved after their posting. They left behind thirty-four dead - victims of disease, poor diet and Tiwi spears. Others died when the crews of the fort’s supply ships were slaughtered and beheaded by Malay pirates on islands to the north. Two cabin boys from one of them, the Stedcombe, were enslaved by the pirates.
 
What happened at Fort Dundas and why it was abandoned has been largely untold. Nevertheless, it is one of the most engaging stories of nineteenth-century Australia, presented here in Derek Pugh’s usual captivating style.
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*Shortlisted for the NT Chief Minister's Best Non-fiction Award 2020. 


DARWIN:
Origin of a City

In January 1870, the first Top End settlers arrived to find very little 'settlement' ready for them, other than surveyed blocks of land sold to distant investors. They built their colony from scratch, with little tangible reason for its existence until the overland telegraph line came through from London to join Australia to the rest of the world. Then gold was discovered, and hopeful miners rushed to Darwin from all over the country. Most went home disappointed; if they survived the privations of the bush. Then the government imported Chinese workers – and they kept coming; gold dust shining in their eyes. By the end of the decade there were ten times as many Chinese as European settlers, and Chinatown was the most vibrant part of the settlement.

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now
DARWIN:
Growth of a City
The 1880s

Out now; This sequel to Darwin: Origin of a City tells stories from the Top End in the 1880s.



This book was launched by His Honour Austin Asche, AO AC
on 5 May 2021.

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DARWIN 1869: 
The Second Northern Territory Expedition

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY years ago, a motivated and professional team of surveyors and their support staff arrived in Darwin Harbour to measure the land and divide it into allotments already sold by the South Australian government.

​This was the second attempt by the South Australians to establish a colony on the north coast and, under the leadership of the Surveyor General, George Goyder, the work was done at an astonishing rate. 



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​DARWIN 1869:
The First Year in Photographs



All the 1869 photographs of Captain Samuel Sweet, plus the story of settlement in a larger format.




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​ESCAPE CLIFFS:
The First Northern Territory Expedition

This is a story of the start of South Australian colonisation of the Northern Territory. It is a story of greed, courage, exploration, murder, wasted efforts, life and death struggles, insubordination, incredible seamanship, and extraordinary bushmanship, amid government bungling and Aboriginal resistance. 

Escape Cliffs was an attempt by South Australia to become the premier state of the country. It would open up a trading route across the country to Asia, and exploit the agricultural and mining opportunities of the interior. It would be at no cost to the state, as the land was sold, unsurveyed and unseen, to investors prior to the First Northern Territory Expedition even setting out. But then, as the saying goes, the fight really started…



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Turn Left at the Devil Tree

A Memoir 

Accompanied by Turkey, his little ‘hunting’ dog, Derek Pugh founded several outstation schools in the most remote parts of Arnhem Land and gained a rare insight into a traditional way of life which has been witnessed by only a few outsiders.

By turns reflective, tragic and hilarious, Turn Left at the Devil Tree is a memoir of a visiting teacher among the Indigenous people and wildlife of the Top End of Australia. It is also a history - revealing some little known and disturbing events that were sanctioned from the highest levels of government.

Life there was “frustrating at times, but always a challenge and Derek has recorded his experiences beautifully in this delightful book”. Ted Egan AO

Turn Left at the Devil Tree. 
This a history and memoir of life in central Arnhem Land in Australia's Northern Territory.  Contact me and I can send you one directly. Read a review at http://reviews.waterstones.com. 

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Awards:
Winner: Territory Read Best Non-Fiction Book 2016
Finalist: Chief Minister's Book of the Year, 2016

Tambora:
Travels to Sumbawa and the Mountain that Changed the World.

Derek Pugh
This is a history and a travelogue to Sumbawa, Indonesia, released on the eve of the bicentenary of the largest eruption in recorded history.
Mt Tambora - with a VEI of 7 - was ten times the size of the more famous Krakatau. It erupted on 10th April 1815 with dramatic impact on the East Indies and across the world: it changed the global climate for at least three years (known as the “Year Without Summer”) and the world reeled from its long lasting effects: more than 100,000 Indonesians died from the event or from the disease and famine that followed: millions were affected worldwide through starvation, disease and death; it caused the total the destruction of the Tamboran culture, language and people; massive European emigration; numerous floods and/or droughts; religious fervour and the creation of a new religion; the invention of the bicycle; the ‘westward ho!” wagon trains in the US; magnificent art; the birth of science fiction and Frankenstein; widespread riots and political instability; coloured snow and frosts in mid-summer.
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YA Fiction

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Derek Pugh Books


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Bio: Derek Pugh OAM, is an educator and award-winning author, writing books in several genres: NT history, science, adventure travel and YA fiction. He is most well-known for his history series on early European settlement of the Top End, Tambora, and the novels Tammy Damulkurra, and Schoolies. He lives in Darwin but as he grew up in the Australian Capital Territory and moved to the Northern Territory nearly 40 years ago, he claims to have been a ‘Territorian’ all his life. He has had a long career in education in several contexts: from large urban senior schools, to tiny remote homeland centre schools in Central Arnhem Land, and several international schools. He now teaches part time, writes about Northern Territory settlement history and is busy promoting the settlement bicentenary coming up in 2024. 


Pugh lives in Darwin and can be contacted on derekpugh1@gmail.com.

Awards: Winner: Territory Read Best Non-Fiction Book 2016 for Tambora: Travels to Sumbawa and the Mountain of Change
Short-listed: Chief Minister's Book of the Year, 2016 for Tambora
Short-listed: Chief Minister's Book of the Year, 2020 for Darwin: Origin of a City
Short-listed: Chief Minister's Book of the Year, 2021 for Port Essington

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Buy Derek Pugh Books directly from the author here

Book and eBook Distribution:

Twenty to the Mile: The Overland Telegraph Line https://www.booktopia.com.au/twenty-to-the-mile-the-overland-telegraph-line-derek-pugh/book/9780648142195.html
Port Essington: the British in North Australia 1838-49  https://www.booktopia.com.au/port-essington-derek-pugh/book/9780648142171.html
Darwin: Growth of a City. The 1880s - https://www.booktopia.com.au/darwin-derek-pugh/book/9780648142188.html
​Darwin: Origin of a City. The 1870s - https://www.woodslane.com.au/Book/9780648142140/Darwin-Origin-of-a-City
Darwin 1869: The Second Northern Territory Expedition - https://www.woodslane.com.au/Book/9780648142126/Darwin-1869
Darwin 1869: The First Year in Photographs - https://www.woodslane.com.au/Book/9780648142133/Darwin-1869-The-First-Year-in-Photographs
Escape Cliffs: The First Northern Territory Expedition - https://www.woodslane.com.au/Book/9780648142102/Escape-Cliffs
Fort Dundas - The British in North Australia 1824-29. https://www.woodslane.com.au/Book/9780992355869/Fort-Dundas
Fort Wellington: The British in North Australia 1827-29
Tambora - email: derekpugh1@gmail.com
Tammy Damulkurra - email: derekpugh1@gmail.com
Turn Left at the Devil Tree - email: derekpugh1@gmail.com
The Owner's Guide to the Teenage Brain:email: derekpugh1@gmail.com
Schoolies: eBook, book: https://www.booktopia.com.au/schoolies-derek-pugh/book/9780648142157.html 

​or email ​derekpugh1@gmail.com