FLINDERS TELEGRAPH CABLE COMPLEX AND PIER

Flinders Telegraph Cable Complex and Pier was established in the 1860s and provided an essential telegraphic link between mainland Australia and Tasmania for seven decades. Evidence of the Telegraph Complex survives in the Pier and exotic plantings and in archaeological remains from between 1869 and the 1940s including the first of three cable station buildings at Flinders, staff residences and workshops (known as Happy Valley); three cable test houses and one repeater station as well as buried telegraph cables and cable trenches under the land and the seabed surrounding the pier and associated archaeological deposits. Also significant is Flinders Pier, constructed in timber from 1864, including the submerged remains of a now demolished breakwater, the fishing shed (which may be a relocated goods shed/kiosk) and the cargo shed (VHR H0906). 

 The Flinders Telegraph Cable Complex and Pier is of historical, archaeological and social significance to the State of Victoria. It satisfies the following criteria for inclusion in the Victorian Heritage Register: 
Criterion A Importance to the course, or pattern, of Victoria’s cultural history. 
Criterion C Potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of Victoria’s cultural history. 
Criterion G Strong or special association with a particular present-day community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons. 

 

The Flinders Telegraph Cable Complex and Pier is historically significant for its association with the installation and first successful operation of submarine telegraphic communications in Victoria and the site where telegraphic communications between Victoria and Tasmania were installed, operated and expanded for seven decades until the introduction of telephonic communications in the 1930s. This connected trading partners Victoria and Tasmania and enabled rapid communication between Tasmania and the rest of Australia and the world. 

 

The Flinders Telegraph Cable Complex and Pier is archaeologically significant for its potential to contain archaeological features, deposits and artefacts that relate to the use of the place as a substantial and early submarine telegraph complex. These features and deposits have the potential to reveal information about the construction and location of buildings and other structures. Investigations could reveal information about the establishment, human occupation and development of the place over time, as well as its subsequent abandonment. 

 

The Flinders Pier is socially significant to the community that has grown around the scientific study and popular observation of the Victorian Common or Weedy Seadragon, Phyllopteryx taeniolatus. The pier has been a focus of accelerating levels of activity related to the study and observation of seadragons since at least the 1970s. There is a resonance to this attachment, both because of the high profile and popular appeal of the seadragon and because of the widespread attachment of the community who are drawn to this location.