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

The Singing Line was the term given by Australia's Aborigines to the telegraph wire that, once slung across the continent, would open the world and permanently alter their lives. Writer Alice Thomson and her husband Ed follow the trail of the singing line while tracing the path of her great-great-grandparents, Charles and Alice Todd, the latter for whom Thomson was named. Flipping from the present to the mid-18th century in which her ancestors lived, this book offers both a glimpse of the heroic efforts of telegraph surveyors and the changes that these poles and wires wrought. The tales of Alice Todd are sparse and of little consequence, however, since after arriving from England, the young bride never strays 30 miles from her home in Adelaide. It's her husband, Charles, who propels much of the book, as he oversaw the construction of the Australian telegraph in the 1850s, traveling--sometimes on camel--across desert, bush, and a no-man's-land where white men had never been, battling man-eating alligators, quicksand, monsoons, near-starvation, dehydration, and searing heat along the way. At its best, The Singing Line is lively, funny, and filled with odd narrative snapshots of Aussies and their land. Like the stringing of the telegraph wire itself, though, this book can become a bit monotonous and fail to fully engage the reader. Ultimately, however, it does succeed in its task--and leaves one with an appreciation of struggles oft-forgotten in the age of modems and cellular phones. --Melissa RossiRead More