The broken wire
The weather turned bad in the middle of August 1900. Tasmania was swept by heavy rain and hail.1 Snow fell and covered the mountains and the high country.2 It was said to be the worst weather in five years.3
On the morning of Friday 17 August, the telegraph line between Queenstown and Hobart stopped working.4 It was linesman Alfred Taylor’s job to fix it. He knew that the break would be at Mount Arrowsmith – it was the highest and most exposed part of the line. The weather there would have been terrible. He prepared his pack horse, repair equipment and supplies.
On Saturday morning, Taylor headed west from his home at Dee along the Linda Track. It would be 60 kilometres of hard going. There was snow everywhere. In some places up to 3 metres deep. By the end of the day, his horse was exhausted.5 Taylor hired another from a farm at Clarence River. There was still 25 kilometres to go.
Taylor took another two days to reach the Iron Store, a travellers’ hut, near Mount Arrowsmith. He stayed overnight with the caretaker, David Temple.6
Tuesday, 21st August – Iron Store to Mount Arrowsmith
The next morning; warmed, feed and refreshed; Taylor and his horse rejoined the Linda Track. It would be a hard day but they would be back at the Iron Store that night. Although the track was buried by snow, Taylor knew where it went. The telegraph line that generally accompanied it was a good guide.7 The regularly placed telegraph poles acted as track-markers even if they sometimes took a slightly different route to the track.
Taylor and his horse took a break after a few kilometres. They would refresh at a small stream near the foot of Mount Arrowsmith. But the horse wasn’t interested. It kept looking towards the snow-covered mountain. Taylor thought that it sensed someone nearby. Surely no one could penetrate the deep snow-drifts that blocked the track over the mountain.8
However, there was someone. A man was nearby pushing through the snow. He was desperately following the telegraph poles. But Taylor stuck to the track and didn’t see him at the telegraph line nearby. The man was stubbornly focused on reaching the shelter of the Iron Store to deliver a lifesaving message.
Taylor and the horse left the plains to start the long climb up Mount Arrowsmith. A little further on, they passed another man. He was near to death, silent and sunk deep in the snow. This time even the horse didn’t notice him.
On top of Arrowsmith
Taylor and the horse wound higher up the flanks of Mount Arrowsmith through deepening snowdrifts. At the top, it was a bleak white wilderness. Snow was so deep that it almost touched the telegraph line in places. The only relief from the white was a couple of rocky outcrops, the regularly spaced telegraph poles and a dark shape below the line of the track – a man lying on the snow.
Taylor would have checked whether the man was alive. He wasn’t. Taylor repaired the break and tested the line. He climbed a pole, connected his telegraph key and sent a message to Hobart. Nothing more could be done. Taylor and his horse returned to the Iron Store along the long furrow that they had carved through the snow on their outwards journey.
When Taylor reached the Iron Store, Temple was gone. However, there was a man wrapped in blankets, huddled near the fire.9 He was in a bad way and could hardly speak.
Another man in the snow
The survivor had already delivered his message to Temple – another man was still out in the snow, unable to walk and near death. Temple helped the survivor and then organised the rescue of the second man. He needed help, because carrying a frozen immobile person through snow is very difficult and needs at a lot of people.
Temple headed east to Derwent Bridge, 12 kilometres away, to recruit a group of road workers. They reached the man around 1 am. He was still alive. The rescuers shovelled the snow away from him, lit a big fire and gave him food.10 Then they waited through the night for some horses to carry the man to the Iron Store. They came at around five o’clock in the afternoon.11
Thursday 23 August – The Iron Store
Taylor had telegraphed a brief message from the top of Mount Arrowsmith on Tuesday. He sent more messages from the Iron Store that night. As the first survivor recovered, he was able to give some detail of his ordeal. He was George Ebdon, the man rescued from the snow was William Hanney and the man who had died on Mount Arrowsmith was John Largan.
Ebdon and his group had left Gormanston on the Linda Track seven days earlier, on Thursday 16th. Their first day of walking got them to a hut, the Wooden Store. On the second day, they should have been able to get to the Iron Store. But they became bogged down by increasingly thick snow as they climbed up the step western side of Mount Arrowsmith. Largan was badly affected by the cold and exertion. He became very weak. At the top of the mountain, the group found a little protection among some big rocks near the track, but they still had a terrible night. The next morning, they started a desperate journey for the Iron Store. Very soon Largan collapsed. He was dead.12 Ebdon and Hanney went on. They were eight kilometres from the Iron Store.
Progress on Saturday and Sunday was painfully slow. Hanney led the way. His was the most exhausting work, pushing a way through the snow. Sometimes they were briefly buried by snow collapsing onto them. They made about five kilometres.
By Monday, Hanney was done. He told Ebdon to leave him and save himself. By then he was walking bare foot. He had taken off his boots because of pain and wasn’t able to put them back on. They made a little over a kilometre that day. They would spend their fourth night sleeping in the snow. They had run out of food after two days before.
On Tuesday, Hanney couldn’t go any further. Ebdon left him to reach the Iron Store as quickly as possible to seek help.
By Wednesday evening, Hanney had been rescued and both men were at the Iron Store. Ebdon had swollen feet. Hanney’s legs were frost bitten from his calves to his toes. Flesh on his legs and his toe nails was dropping off’.13
But within a couple of days, Ebdon and Hanney had recovered enough to leave for Hobart. Hanney went to hospital. He lost half a dozen toe nails, and he was expected to lose some toes. But he was said to be in good health and cheerful.14 Ebdon went home.
Burying John Largan
The Gormanston police needed two trips to find John Largan’s body. Both were difficult. After the first trip, a few days after Largan’s death, they returned from Mount Arrowsmith frost bitten, without food and without sighting his body.15
The second trip was about three weeks later. This time it was a large party of police. They were accompanied a reporter for the Mt Lyell Standard and Strahan Gazette – Charles Pearce. The party encountered snow as they climbed Mount Arrowsmith. The top of the mountain was still covered in deep snow. In the distance was the massive rock outcrop where the three men had camped the night before Largan died.
The police found the camp. It was chaotic. A tent, clothing and a pair of boots were scattered around. Looking about they found a line of discarded clothes leading downhill towards the track; a pair of underpants, a singlet and a belt. About 200 metres below the camp, and near the track, a small black object protruded from the snow. It was a part of John Largan’s snow covered body. He was lying face down. His arms were half extended, and his hands clenched. He was wearing his trousers and shirt, and nearby was a blanket.
The police made a stretcher out of a sapling, the blanket and tent. They carried Largan’s body ‘some distance with extreme difficulty’. They quickly decided to bury him on the mountain.
A deep grave was dug with a shovel after considerable labor in a suitable spot a few yards below the track. A number of saplings were cut and laid across the body to keep it from the hyenas, and solemnly the cavity was filled in.
A cross of wood was neatly prepared and inscribed with the words, deeply cut and marked,” John Largan,’ Frozen In the Snow, August 18, 1900.”
The cross was placed at the head of the grave, rocks were arranged around it, and John Largan’s last resting place was complete.16
There were rumours about Largan’s death. In 1985, Jack Thwaites stated that one story was ‘that his companions robbed him and left him there to die in the weather’.19 It is true that Largan didn’t know Ebdon and Hanney before making the journey. And that he wouldn’t have known that they both had convictions for drunkenness, theft and assault.20 But the details of what happened on the mountain can never be known now.
For decades, Largan’s grave was a landmark on the Linda Track. There were reports that it was tended by passing travellers.17 Some left wreaths of wild flowers.18 However, few people used the track after the Lyell Highway was completed in the 1930s. The grave hasn’t been mentioned for years. We set out to find it and bring this story back to life. You can read about our first searches here.
Copyright Peter Brown 2026
1 Mercury, 17 August 1900.
2 Mt Lyell Standard and Strahan Gazette, 17 August 1900; Examiner, 17 August 1900.
3 Examiner, 16 August 1900.
4 Mercury, 20 August 1900; Mercury, 18 August 1900.
5 Mercury, 20 August 1900; Mount Lyell Standard and Strahan Gazette, 27 August 1900.
6 Mount Lyell Standard and Strahan Gazette, 27 August 1900.
7 Tasmanian, 7 January 1893. Taylor had supervised the construction of the telegraph line and been its linesman for about 10 years.
8 North West Advocate, 30 August 1900.
9 Mercury, 23 August 1900.
10 Mount Lyell Standard and Strahan Gazette, 28 August 1900.
11 Zeehan and Dundas Herald, 28 August 1900.
12 Mount Lyell Standard and Strahan Gazette, 23 August 1900.
13 Examiner, 25 August 1900.
14 Examiner, 27 August 1900.
15 Mount Lyell Standard and Strahan Gazette, 27 August 1900.
16 Mount Lyell Standard and Strahan Gazette, 27 August 1900.
17 Argus, 12 February 1927.
18 Advocate, 25 June 1931.
19 Jack Thwaites, Linda Track 1928 (Interview transcript) – website [http://www.jackthwaitesbushdiaries.com] – no longer active, 1928, Copyright 2008 Simon Kleinig.
20 Mercury, 20 December 1890; Tasmanian News, 13 August, 1901; Tasmanian News, 21 August, 1901; Daily Post, 29 September 1908; Daily Telegraph, 20 March 1900.