Extract from David Hunt’s True Girt: The Unauthorised History of Australia, volume 2.
In 1889, seventeen years after South Australia connected its telegraph line to the outside world, Western Australia was connected to the Overland Telegraph. The South Australian section of the line comprised of steel poles & copper wire.
But the Western Australian section was made with wooden poles, vulnerable to termites, fire & decay and steel wire which snapped under extremes of temperature.
Australia has modelled its National Broadband Network on the Western Australian telegraph line.