Singing Line

An inpoverished young scientist from Greenwich, he took up the post of Goernment Astronomer and Superintendent of Telegraphs for South Australia. His mission? To string a telegraph wire across one of the last uncrossed colonial widernesses, and finally to connect Australia with Britain, a near-impossible task. With him went his young wife alice, a spirited and intrepid woman years ahead of her time, after whom Alice Springs would be named. In 1997, their great-great-granddaughter, also named Alice, embarked on the adventure of a lifetime, following their footsteps across the Great Australian emptiness. Her plan was to track the telegraph, and her ancestors, from Adelaide over the thousands of miles ofdesert, outback, swamp and mountain that charles Todd had crossed with his men a century and a half before.