2022 150 Years: Overland Telegraph 50c PNC (Perth Mint)

The Perth Mint and Australia Post are pleased to present this stamp and coin cover which features the 150th anniversary of the overland telegraph’s completion.

On 22 August 1872, the Overland Telegraph line between Adelaide and Darwin was finally connected. It was the result of years of planning and 23 months of arduous construction through the arid centre of the continent and the wet, mosquito-infested terrain of the Top End. The telegraph involved 36,000 poles across 2,839 kilometres, from Port Augusta in the south to Darwin in the north, through territory virtually unexplored by Europeans.

Charles Todd, South Australia’s Superintendent of Telegraphs and the Postmaster-General, was the visionary responsible for bringing the project to realisation. This huge logistical achievement has been called the greatest engineering feat of the 19th-century Australia. This dramatically transformed the speed and breadth of communications in the country.