{"story":["New Zealand's first telegraph line, between Lyttelton and Christchurch, was set up by the Canterbury provincial government in 1862. British military engineers built a line from Auckland to Drury that opened in June 1863, just before the Waikato War, and by 1865 a southern line ran from Invercargill to the Hurunui River in North Canterbury. A cable was laid across Cook Strait in 1866, though Te Ara notes it was not reliable. In the North Island, opposition from some Māori delayed the network, and the Wellington–Auckland line was not fully working until 1872; with the help of Māori allies and the use of military redoubts, it ran via Napier, Taupō and Tauranga. Messages were sent in Morse code and delivered as written telegrams. Overseas news and letters, however, still came by ship, and NZHistory notes that newspapers and businesses had to wait months for replies to letters.","Julius Vogel, who at various times was colonial treasurer, postmaster general and telegraph commissioner, wanted cables linking New Zealand with Australia, the United States and Britain, and co-operated with New South Wales in establishing a cross-Tasman cable. The New South Wales and New Zealand governments subsidised the cost. In February 1876 the cable ships Hibernia and Edinburgh of the Eastern Extension Australasia & China Telegraph Company laid a cable from La Perouse, on Botany Bay near Sydney, to Wakapuaka near Nelson, crossing the Tasman in 11 days. Nelson was chosen because the South Island's business traffic was heavier than the North's, and a landline connected the cable station to the town. The first messages went out on 21 February 1876, three days after the cable was spliced. With connections overland via Adelaide and Darwin and undersea via Java and Suez, New Zealand had telegraphic contact with London the same year.","The cable was expensive. At first a telegram to London cost 15 shillings a word, which Te Ara estimates at around $100 in 2009 terms, and one to Australia cost 1s. 6d.; most users were government officials and businesses. NZHistory states that by 1876 the undersea link reduced communication with Europe to a matter of hours, and that newspapers and businesses valued near-instant global communication; colonial newspapers soon dropped the phrase 'Home papers please copy'. Overseas cable traffic kept growing: messages to and from overseas grew eightfold to 120,000 between 1880 and 1910. Twenty-five staff and their families lived at the station, including Eastern Company operators, Post Office telegraphers and a Press Association reporter. The station's call sign was 'waka' (canoe).","Newer cable routes gradually took business away from the station. Telegraph staff left in 1909, fire destroyed the main buildings in 1914, and in 1917 Wellington became the New Zealand terminus of the Sydney cable. In 1976 the Historic Places Trust placed a marker near the station ruins to mark the centenary of the connection, and NZHistory lists the site among its History of New Zealand in 100 Places. The bay became known as Cable Bay, and under the 2014 Treaty of Waitangi settlement with Ngāti Tama ki Te Tau Ihu its official name is Rotokura / Cable Bay."],"sources":[{"title":"Telecommunications","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/telecommunications","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Telecommunications – Early telegraphy and telegrams","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/telecommunications/page-1","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Engineering on the sea floor – Submarine cables","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/engineering-on-the-sea-floor/page-2","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Arrival of the New Zealand cable at Botany Bay","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/artwork/6639/arrival-of-the-new-zealand-cable-at-botany-bay","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Vogel, Julius","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1v4/vogel-julius","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Wakapuaka Cable Station","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/wakapuaka-cable-station","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Building Vogel's railways","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/the-vogel-era/building-vogels-railways","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Ngāti Kōata, Ngāti Rārua, Ngāti Tama ki Te Tau Ihu, and Te Ātiawa o Te Waka-a-Māui Claims Settlement Act 2014","url":"https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2014/0020/latest/whole.html","publisher":"New Zealand Legislation"}]}