The Singing Line: Tracking the Australian Adventures of My Intrepid Victorian Ancestors

by Alice Thomson

Following the tradition of Daisy Bates in the Desert and In Patagonia , Alice Thomson conjures up a country of unimaginable strangeness and beauty.

In 1855, Charles Todd and his impetuous young bride Alice--for whom Alice Springs would be named--left the comfort of Victorian England for the wilds of South Australia, a place so isolated that letters from home took five months to arrive. It was Charles's dream to improve this situtaion. In 1870, Todd set out with an army of men, supplies, and Afghan camels to run a telegraph line--"the singing line"--from Adelaide in the south to Darwin in the north.

Braving scorching sun, flies, mosquitoes, drenching rains, and all manner of terrible food, Alice Thomson and her husband retraced that trek more than a century later. The result is a wry and mesmerizing narrative--combining the delights of travel writing, family memoir, and colonial history in a thoroughly enjoyable tale.

320 pages, Paperback

First published October 5, 1999

Reviews

[Peter Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a good read,interesting and told with a down to earth style as she follows the route of her great grandfather across Australia south to north and his work making the overland telegraph.His wife has been commemorated in the name Alice Springs hence the author’s wish to see the life of the women she is named after.Good for tourists to read before or while they are in South Australia and for anyone with an interest in Australia.As usual I was impressed by how people survived and created a successful life in the new country of Australia.