The Land of the Kangaroo / Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent

by Thomas Wallace Knox

“All the attacks on our stations have not been as bloodless as the one I have just described,” the gentleman continued. “Three or four years after the line was opened the blacks attacked a station about one thousand miles north of Adelaide. One of the operators, Mr. Stapleton, was mortally wounded, and so was one of the line repairers. Both the other white men at the station were slightly wounded, and one of the blacks in our service was killed. The attack lasted only a short time, and the assailants were driven away by the well-directed fire of the people at the station.

“The mortally wounded operator, Mr. Stapleton, was placed on a couch, while the other operator was telegraphing the news of the occurrence to Adelaide. A doctor was called to the telegraph office in the city, and on learning the nature of the wound he pronounced it mortal. Mr. Stapleton’s wife was a telegraph operator, and was then employed in the station at Adelaide. A telegraph instrument was placed at the bedside of the dying man, and connected with the instrument on his wife’s desk. The two exchanged loving messages for a few minutes, and then the husband with his last efforts telegraphed an eternal good-by to his wife, dropped the instrument from his hand, and fell back dead. I was in the office at Adelaide at the time of this occurrence, and was one of those in the room where Mrs. Stapleton sat. Nearly all of those present were experienced operators, and could understand the clicking of the instrument. Every eye was filled with tears, and every heart was full of sympathy for the woman who had been so tragically widowed. As she received the final message of farewell she fell from her chair in a dead faint, from which she did not recover for hours.”

As the foregoing story was narrated to our young friends, their eyes, too, were moist, and so were those of Dr. Whitney, who was sitting close by them. Silence prevailed for several minutes, and then the conversation turned to other subjects.

The gentleman explained that the northern terminus of the telegraph line was at Port Darwin, where connection was made with the telegraph cable to Singapore, and thence to Europe. “I suppose, in time,” said he, “there will be other telegraph connections, but for the present this is the only one that Australia has with the rest of the world. Undoubtedly we shall one day have a cable to the United States, and that will certainly greatly facilitate commerce. At present, telegrams coming from your country to this must come by a very roundabout journey.”

Harry asked what course a telegram would be obliged to take in coming from San Francisco to Adelaide.

“Let me see,” said the gentleman; “in the first place, it would be telegraphed overland from San Francisco to New York, and then it would go under the Atlantic Ocean through one of the transatlantic cables, and then there would be two or three routes by which it could be sent. It could go by submarine cable to the Straits of Gibraltar, thence under the Mediterranean and Red Seas, and the Indian Ocean to Bombay, or it could cross Europe by one of the land lines, and then go through Russia and Persia to the north of India, reaching Bombay by the land route. From Bombay it would be telegraphed across India to Madras, and thence by submarine cable to Singapore, and from Singapore it would be sent by cable to Port Darwin, and thence by the Australian overland line to Adelaide. The message would be repeated six or seven times in the course of its journey, and the fact that so few mistakes are made in the numerous repetitions, many of them by people having an imperfect knowledge of English, speaks volumes in praise of the telegraph system.”

Both of our young friends heartily indorsed this remark, and agreed with their informant that the telegraph certainly performed excellent work.

Our friends made the journey along the line of railway to which they had been invited. They found it interesting though not altogether free from monotony, as there was an excessive amount of sameness in the country through which they traveled. They passed through a range of low mountains which were not sufficiently broken to be picturesque. They crossed several dry or slightly moistened beds of rivers, where indications were clearly visible that in times of heavy rains these dry beds or insignificant streams were turned to floods. Here and there the line crossed immense sheep farms and also great wheatfields, but there were wide stretches of land which seemed to have no occupants whatever. Most of the country was open and free from trees. Then there were other parts where the line passed for miles and miles through “scrub,” and at irregular intervals they came upon patches and stretches of Australian forest.

Harry noted that the forests through which they passed had very little undergrowth, so that it was easy to ride in any direction among the trees. Most of the trees that they saw were eucalypti, of which there are many varieties. The eucalyptus is by far the most common tree of Australia, and the best known variety is the one that is called “the blue gum.” It is said that fevers do not prevail where the eucalyptus grows, and this theory seems to be developed into a well-established fact. Decoctions and other extracts are made from the leaves, bark, wood, and gum of the eucalyptus and are given to fever patients with more or less success. The eucalyptus has been taken to foreign countries, and where the climatic conditions are suitable it has flourished and established itself. The French government introduced it into Algeria and planted it at military stations, where the soldiers had suffered much from malaria. At all those stations the malaria was long ago driven away by the trees, and places that were once unhealthy are now renowned for their salubrity.

The youths observed that most of the eucalyptus trees were tall and slender. The gentleman who accompanied them said that their trunks were often found with a diameter of ten to twelve feet, and some had been measured that were sixteen feet in diameter at a distance of ten feet from the ground. The trees grow very rapidly, and their timber when green is soft, so that they can be felled, split, and sawed very easily, but when dry it becomes very hard. It is a very useful wood, as it is adapted for many purposes. The bark contains a great deal of tannin, and it has become to some extent an article of commerce.