Events in 1870-71 led Otago Daily Times editor George Barton to claim in his newspaper that the government had been intercepting telegraphs for political gain.
Telegraph
Events In History
26 August 1866
After two bungled attempts and near disaster at sea, the installation of the first communications cable between the North and South Islands of New Zealand was completed. A simple copper telegraph cable was laid on the sea floor from Whites Bay, north of Blenheim, to Lyall Bay on Wellington’s south coast.
Articles
The Vogel era
In 1870, Colonial Treasurer Julius Vogel launched the most ambitious development programme in New Zealand’s history. The ‘Vogel era’ was a decisive moment in New Zealand’s 19th-century transformation from a Māori world to a Pākehā one. Read the full article
Page 4 - Building Vogel's railways
Julius Vogel wasn’t the first colonial politician to promise to fund public works and immigration with borrowed money. But the early 1870s offered better prospects for
Main image: Post and Telegraph guard at Cable Bay
Soliders of the South Island Battalion, Post and Telegraph Corps, guard the telegraph station at Cable Bay, near Nelson, in August 1914.
