|
Southport Cable Hut is a heritage-listed telegraph station at Cable Park, Main Beach Parade, Main Beach, Queensland, Australia. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 3 May 2007. == History == Cable Park is a small reserve located on the corner of Cable Street and Main Beach Parade at Main Beach on the Gold Coast. The reserve contains a small brick hut and a raised circular platform with a plaque. The brick hut is the Australian terminal of the Pacific Cable, completed in 1902. This telegraph cable linked Australia and Great Britain via Canada and British dependencies in the Pacific. It was an important communications link between the east coast of Australia and the rest of the world until its closure in 1962.〔 Telegraph communication developed in the mid-19th century as a result of many years of discovery and experimentation in electrical communication culminating in the work of Samuel Morse. The rapid long distance communication provided by telegraph systems had a major impact on society. The telegraph was quickly utilised by news services; Associated Press and Reuters press service were founded to take advantage of the technology. Telegraph companies soon offered financial services, providing the facility to send money orders via the telegraph.〔 In Australia the telegraph helped to alleviate the isolation of the colonies. New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia were connected by telegraph by 1860. Queensland's first telegraph connection was made in 1861 between Brisbane and Ipswich. Brisbane was linked to Sydney the same year.〔 The first telegraph link between Australia and Britain opened in 1872. The link was via the Eastern Cable Company's network. It was routed through Singapore, India, Suez and Gibraltar. It was initially proposed to make landfall in north Queensland. However, the South Australian government successfully negotiated for the link to connect with Adelaide via Port Darwin and an overland route through the centre of Australia.〔 Before the Pacific Cable was opened, the Eastern Cable Company and its associates maintained a monopoly over international telegraph traffic with Australia. As a result, the cost of communication between Britain and Australia remained very high and beyond the means of most people.〔 Sandford Fleming, Chief Engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway, was an early advocate of an alternative cable route between Australia and Great Britain via Canada and the Pacific Ocean. He expressed his views as early as the Colonial Conference of 1887. A major advantage put forward by Fleming and other proponents of the Pacific route was that it would be more secure in times of war. The existing link passed through countries that were not part of the British Empire. It was proposed that the Pacific Cable would pass only through British dependencies.〔 The high cost of telegrams through the Eastern Cable Company's system provided further motivation for a competing route. The proposed Pacific Cable would break the Eastern Cable Company's monopoly and lower the cost of communication between Britain and Australia. When the Pacific Cable opened, the cost of telegrams reduced to less than half the former rate. The ability to communicate directly with the United States and so access more trade opportunities was another argument in favour of the Pacific Cable.〔 By the mid-1890s, agreement was reached that the cable should be laid. However debate about management of the cable laying project and ownership of the completed cable continued for some years. Finally, it was agreed that funding should be shared between the governments of Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. A committee named the Pacific Cable Board was formed made up of members from each of these countries. The Pacific Cable Act (1901) gave this board responsibility for managing the project and operating the completed cable.〔 The route selected for the cable linked Southport, Norfolk Island, Fiji, Fanning Island, and Vancouver. A branch connected to New Zealand. Since cartographers of the day traditionally coloured member countries of the British Empire in red, the route became known as the All Red Route.〔 Cable laying started in 1902 with two ships, Anglica and Colonia. Colonia, built specifically for the project, laid cable from Vancouver Island to Fanning Island in the mid-Pacific. Anglia laid cable from Southport to Norfolk Island, Fiji, New Zealand and Fanning Island.〔 The cable was landed at Southport in March 1902. It was laid into a trench through the dunes of Narrow Neck near Southport and terminated at a cable hut located close to the beach. From here, it connected to a cable which crossed under the Nerang River to the cable station at Bauer Street. The laying of the Pacific Cable was a major engineering feat for the time, costing about two million pounds.〔 The Pacific Cable was completed on 31 October 1902 and officially opened at Southport on 3 November 1902 by the Postmaster-General of the Commonwealth, the Honourable James Drake. It was opened to public traffic on 8 December 1902.〔 Until 1912 Southport handled telegraph traffic for all over Australia. In 1912, a cable from Auckland was extended to Sydney and for a period after this, traffic for the southern States went directly to Sydney from Auckland. Technical changes to the system in 1923, including the installation of automatic repeaters, relegated Southport to a repeater station.〔 The Southport station continued to be operated by the Pacific Cable Board until 1932. Management was then taken over by Cable and Wireless Limited until 1946 when, after the Australian Government passed the Overseas Telecommunications Act, responsibility passed to the Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC).〔 By January 1950, the original cable hut located close to the beach at Narrow Neck had gone, leaving only a cement slab and a flag pole partly surrounded by a barbed wire fence. It is believed that it was destroyed in a severe storm. Serious erosion of the cable reserve by February 1951 threatened these remains and the cable connections located there. The current brick hut located at Cable Park was built during the first half of 1951 to remedy this situation.〔 In October 1962, the Compac Cable between Sydney and Vancouver was completed. The original Pacific Cable was thus rendered redundant and the Southport to Norfolk Island cable was closed. The Cable Station at Bauer Street was sold to De La Salle Brothers who operated a community youth centre there. In the early 1980s, the Cable Station buildings were removed, two of them to The Southport School where they continue to function as music rooms. However, the brick cable hut remains in its original location at Cable Park, Southport.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Southport Cable Hut」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|