The Singing Line. Tracking The Australian Adventures Of My Intrepid Victorian Ancestors

Cover Type: Softcover
Book Condition: Good
Jacket Condition: None Issued
Publisher: Anchor Books
Publisher Place: New York
Publisher Year: 2000
Edition: First Edition

Description: 292 pages. Book is in general good condition. There is some light reading wear present, but still a presentable copy.

Publishers Description: 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 Charless 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.

ISBN: 9780385497534