Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a member of a bushranging gang whose task is to keep his colleagues informed of the whereabouts of potential victims or efforts to capture them.

1864		in Bell’s Life in Sydney 23 Apr. 2/5: Two or three noted ‘bush-telegraphs’ were among the crowd who had come [...] to obtain one more look at the robbers [AND].
1878		Australian i 507: The police are baffled by the false reports of the confederates, and the number and activity of the bush telegraphs [F&H].
1888		‘Rolf Boldrewood’ Robbery Under Arms (1922) 2: Our ‘bush telegraphs’ were safe to let us know when the ‘traps’ were closing in on us. [Ibid.] 240: A bush telegraph, you see, is mostly worked about the neighbourhood he was born in [...] Within twenty miles of where he was born and bred he knows every track, every range, every hill, every creek, as well as all the short cuts and by-roads.
1893		K. Mackay Out Back 74: A hint dropped in this town set the bush telegraphs riding in all directions. [Ibid.] 188: What’s the name of the bloomin’ bush wire as told yer?
1945		(ref. to late 19C) Baker Aus. Lang. 75: The original bush telegraph was a confederate of bushrangers who warned them of police movements.
1955		(ref. to late 19C) N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 231/1: bush telegraph – those who supplied news of police movement to bushrangers.

2. (also blackfellow telegraph, bush telegram) a network of gossip and rumour that brings news, often inaccurate, before the official sources [SAusE blackfellow (now derog.), a Native Australian].

1864		Sydney Punch 13 Aug. 91/1: The following correspondence has been forwarded to us for publication. It was carried through the medium of ‘Bush Telegraphs’.
1895		H. Lawson ‘Black Joe’ in Roderick (1972) 255: The nearest squatter’s wife [...] arranged (by bush telegraph) to drive over next morning.
1906		C.J. Hyne Kate Meredith, Financier 152: ‘By the way, Slade, have you been in touch with the bush telegraph?’ ‘Oh, I heard that the usual vague rows and horribles were going on in Okky City.’.
1916		J.L. Beeston Five Months at Anzac 35: Bush Telegraph [...] is a tortoise in its movements compared with a Beachogram [AND].
1926		M. Forrest Hibiscus Heart 199: They felt secure enough, for they had had word by their special bush telegraph.
1937		W.R. Foran African Odyssey 30: The hardy runners and native drums — the latter the ‘bush-telegraph’ system of the Africans — have been supplanted by both telephone and telegraph.
1945		Baker Aus. Lang. 75: Bush telegraph [...] became synonymous with any rumour or false report.
1951		Cusack & James Come in Spinner (1960) 43: Now then, bush telegraph, lay off the staff here.
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 231/1: bush telegram – a rumour or a report which probably isn’t true [...] bush telegraph – [...] the source of an unfounded report. Sometimes the expression is modernized to bush radio.
1956		T. Ronan Moleskin Midas 95: There was blackfellow telegraph that there’d been throuble here, and I’ve come from town.
1960		C. MacInnes Mr Love and Justice (1964) 164: The news of the arrest of Frankie’s girl had already spread by the ponce-prostitute bush telegraph.
1974		G.O. Preshaw Banking under Difficulties 87: The ‘bush telegraph’ was at work [in] the billiard-rooms of the bars of the principal hotels of Burrangon.
1985		A.S. King British Prime Minister 79: The private secretaries of Whitehall constitute the ‘bush telegraph’ of government.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 50: Related to these activities is the term for those who brought news of what the traps or troopers were doing to the bushrangers with whom they sympathised – bush telegraphs. bush telegraph and the even more evocative mulga wire are still in use to describe mostly, though not exclusively, rural rumour networks.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 175: The bush telegraph was all-a-buzz.