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from its terminus in Java to Darwin, provided a landline was constructed from Port Augusta to Darwin by January
1872.
Todd, appointed Postmaster-General and Superintendent of Telegraphs for South Australia in January 1870,
was given charge of the construction of approximately 3 200 kilometres of line through virtually unknown country
where the main source of topographic information was the journals of John McDouall Stuart. Todd divided
the work into three main sections on which work was to proceed simultaneously. The southern section, from
Port Augusta to the Macumba River south of Charlotte Waters, and the northern section from Darwin to Tennant
Creek, were let to private contractors. For the difficult central section, he appointed John Ross, leader of an
advance exploration party, to blaze a route provided with water and timber for telegraph poles. The central section
was completed on time, but the northern section proved more troublesome as a result of the basic supply problem,
the onset of the wet season and navigation problems of the Roper River.
By June 1872, the only section of the telegraph not built was between Daly Waters and Tennant Creek, but
it was bridged by a pony express, and the first through cablegrams were transmitted on 23 June. The landline, a
single iron wire linking ten repeating stations between Darwin and Port Augusta, was completed on 22 August and,
after repairs were made to the submarine cable, in Todd’s words, ‘the Australian Colonies were connected with the
grand electric chain which unites all the nations of the earth’.
Todd, who was made a Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (CMG) in November,
assumed most of the honour for the telegraph but the excellent and essential field work of explorers like Stuart
and the government surveyors, G McMinn, W W Mills, A T Woods, R R Knuckey and W Harvey, who were in
charge of the various construction parties, also needs to be remembered and credited to them.
In 1885, Todd attended an international telegraphic conference in Berlin and during the following year, on a
visit to England, was made an honorary Master of Arts of Cambridge University. This honour, his election as a
fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1889 and his award of Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Michael
and Saint George (KCMG) gave him great satisfaction. He was a fellow also of the Royal Astronomical Society,
the Royal Meteorological Society, and of the Society of Electrical Engineers.
In addition to his chief duties as Postmaster-General, Todd also did valuable astronomical and meteorological
work, published many scientific papers and was active in the colony’s learned societies and educational institutions.
Benevolent and good-humoured, he treated his trusting and respectful staff as a ‘benevolent autocrat’.
Before leaving England in 1855, Todd had married Alice Gillam Bell (d. 1898), of Cambridge, by whom
he had two sons and four daughters; he also brought up three children of a deceased brother. The Todds were a
devoted family and regular worshippers at the Congregational Church. Sir Charles Todd died at Semaphore on
29 January 1910 and was buried in the North Road cemetery. He was survived by a son and four daughters, one of
whom, Gwendoline, married Professor (Sir) William Bragg of the University of Adelaide who in 1915 with his
son, Lawrence, became the first Australians to receive a Nobel Prize.
Todd’s name is commemorated by the river which (sometimes) flows through Alice Springs, and the town is
named after his wife. Todd Street in Alice Springs also remembers Sir Charles.
Australian Post Office, The Centenary of the Adelaide–Darwin Overland Telegraph Line, 1972; F Clune, Overland Telegraph, 1955;
G W Symes, ‘Sir Charles Todd’, ADB, vol 6, 1976; Australasian, 12 October, 16 November 1872; Adelaide Register, 31 January 1910.
GERALD WALSH, Vol 1.TRACKER TOMMY: see MIJANUTRAEGER, ALFRED HERMANN (1895–1980), electrical engineer and inventor of the ‘pedal wireless’ for
communication in the Australian outback, was born on 2 August 1895 at Glenlee, Victoria. His parents, Johann
Hermann Traeger and Louisa Traeger, nee Zerna, loyal Lutherans, were of German extraction, and following their
marriage at Frederickwalde, South Australia, took up a wheat farm in Victoria at Glenlee in the Shire of Dimboola.
In 1902, the family of two daughters and two sons, Alfred, aged seven years and Johann, aged five years, moved
back to South Australia and settled on a farm at Balaklava where the children attended the local school.
At the age of 12 years Traeger rigged up a telephone line from the homestead to the implement shed
50 metres away, using the prongs of a pitch fork to make the magnet for the telephone, the tops of tobacco tins
for the diaphragms, and charcoal for the carbon granules in the microphone. Traeger’s father, realising the natural
mechanical capacity of the boy, enrolled him at the age of 16 years at the Adelaide School of Mines to do the
four-year course in electrical engineering. At the age of twenty, he was awarded his diploma with distinction. For a
time he worked with the Adelaide Tramways Trust and in the Telegraph Section of the Post Office before joining
the firm of Hannan Brothers where he specialised in making generators and ammeters. At the same time he set up a
small workshop of his own in the backyard of the family home in Kensington Gardens, where his parents had now
made their residence, and there pottered away at all kinds of gadgets, finally building his own ‘ham’ transmitter.
He quickly qualified as a licensed amateur radio operator.
At thirty-one years of age, still a bachelor, he responded with enthusiasm to the invitation of the
Reverend John Flynn of the Australian Inland Mission to go with him to Alice Springs, in order to carry out
further experiments with the bulky wireless gear built by Harry Kauper in Adelaide. Flynn and George Towns had
used the wireless, but with no great success, on a trip to Innamincka and Birdsville during the previous year, 1925.
So began Traeger’s practical involvement in Flynn’s work for the next 50 years. The two men travelled by train to
Oodnadatta where Flynn had left his Dodge utility. They arrived in Alice Springs by road during the first week of
October 1926. Their first task was to install in the engine room of the nursing home (Adelaide House in Todd Street)