THE CAPE YORK TELEGRAPH LINE 677 



Premier of Queensland, and who was in 1900 Government Resident 

 at Thursday Island, writing in that year of the transference of the 

 settlement from Somerset to Thursday Island, observes : " I 

 have often thought that a good deal was lost when we left 

 Somerset and the mainland. . . . We abandoned . . . the chance 

 of a railway, which might have passed through the Peninsula and 

 made our starting-point for the East, for India, China and even the 

 old country." 



European events in 1914-18 have demonstrated the value of 

 STRATEGIC RAILWAYS, which become trade and mail railways in times 

 of peace, and it is difficult to imagine a line which could be of 

 greater strategic value to Australia than one linking Cape York with 

 southern centres of population. 



As the completest record of a traverse through the " WET 

 DESERT " while it was yet in its primeval condition, a very high 

 value attaches to BRADFORD'S REPORT of 1883. It seems hardly 

 credible that such a report should not have been published im- 

 mediately on its receipt, and that it should have remained for 

 me, after it had lain for twenty-six years in the pigeon-holes of a 

 Government Department, to be instrumental in bringing it to light. 

 It is now published with the permission of the author and the 

 Federal Deputy Postmaster-General. 



From a recent correspondence with FRANK J. PATERSON, and 

 especially from his letter dated Toowoomba, 1st March, 1820, 

 I am enabled to trace my MISSING MAP. The original, or a copy 

 of it, was in the Mines Office in 1884, when Mr. Paterson was 

 furnished with a copy. That gentleman remarks that, owing to the 

 co-operation of the NATIVE POLICE, the construction party had 

 NO TROUBLE WITH THE NATIVES. He also mentions that there was 

 a plague of RATS, travelling from west to east, while he was camped 

 near Mein. The plague ceased on the appearance of great numbers 

 of brown SNAKES. He was not in a position to say whether the 

 snakes exterminated the rats. 



After surveying from Paterson to Mein, in 1894 Mr. Frank 

 Paterson (who was a partner in the firm of Gordon & Moreton) 

 secured a contract for the erection of the TELEGRAPH STATIONS or 

 ' Forts " along the line, and superintended their construction. 



It only remains to be added that Bradford's diary shows that 

 his journey was not, like my own, made in the wet season, and 

 proves that the wetness of the " Wet Desert " is its permanent 

 condition, and does not depend on the rainfall of the moment. 



