How Alexander Graham Bell lost interest in the telephone

Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, visited Southland on August 29 1910, having arrived at Bluff from Australia on the Moana.

He and his wife were accompanied by the American aviator Frederick Baldwin and the party travelled by train the following day to Queenstown then north through New Zealand on a sight-seeing trip.

Time did not permit him to visit the Invercargill exchange.

Bell said that the penalty for being the inventor of the telephone was being constantly questioned about it.

He said: “That is the thing I know least about. I have had nothing to do with telephones for 30 years. The telephone was invented in 1874, made in 1875, and in 1876 it was introduced to the world at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia.

‘’In 1877 the first companies were organised. I have had nothing to do with telephone business since I880.

‘’I am not a business man, and when the instrument became adapted to ordinary commercial uses, it was no longer of interest to me as a man of science.”

Fred Baldwin, like Bell, was a Canadian, and in 1908 he had been the first British subject to fly an aeroplane.

READ MORE:
* The rise, and age-hastened falls, of an early southern balloon
* The wrecks of Bluff’s watery graveyard
* How a hole in the bush was named

Donkey difficulties in Fiordland

The first donkey in Fiordland was liberated by a party of deerstalkers. The prospect of carrying heavy packs for seven hours from the end of the road at Monowai wasn’t a pleasant one so the group hired a donkey from a nearby station.

The animal was not in favour of the deal and when loaded for the 14 mile journey it walked a few steps and stopped and had to be prodded into activity again.

At every fallen tree the donkey wanted patiently for someone to lift it over, then it would stop again. It took two days to get to the head of the Borland.

Once camp was set up and a fire lit the donkey was advised to find itself some grass and it wasn’t long before the hunters had a huge pot of stew simmering.

In the early hours of the morning one of them woke to see the donkey’s head inside the tent.

It had eaten most of their supplies.

The sudden roar of rage startled poor Neddy who put a hoof into the pot of stew which had been expected to last for a couple of days.

In Fiordland , author Jack McClenaghan writes: “With nearly all their supplies gone the deerstalkers had to cut short their trip but nothing would have persuaded them to take the donkey back with them so they abandoned him at the head of the Borland.

‘’Some day someone may come across his bones and they will be gazing at the remains of the first and last donkey liberated in Fiordland.”

No longer a vilified beast of burden, the ass would have enjoyed his freedom.

Plenty of free fodder and numerous deer for company.