Cardwell Bush Telegraph, Heritage telegraph station in Cardwell, Australia.

The Cardwell Bush Telegraph is a single-storey timber building at 53 Victoria Street, with four core rooms and a detached kitchen, a form common to nineteenth-century timber telegraph and post offices. It was prefabricated in Brisbane and shipped to Cardwell for erection in 1870. It stands at the corner of the Bruce Highway and Balliol Street, next to the Cardwell Divisional Board Hall.

Cardwell was settled in 1864 as the first port town on the Queensland coast north of Bowen, and the telegraph line reached it on 29 December 1869. Tenders for a telegraph office were called in October 1869; George McCallum of Brisbane won the contract and the prefabricated building was shipped north and erected in 1870. The line was meant to link to an overseas cable through the Gulf of Carpentaria, but in 1872 that cable was joined at Darwin instead, so the office served Gulf settlers rather than international traffic. It became an official post office in 1893 and closed in 1982.

The northern rooms contain original post office fixtures and shelving that show how people once managed communications in remote areas. These preserved elements reveal the role this station played in connecting isolated communities.

The building stands at 53 Victoria Street, on the corner of the Bruce Highway and Balliol Street at the southern end of town, next to the Cardwell Divisional Board Hall. The heritage precinct also takes in the former court house and jail on the old government reserve. The centre reopened on 28 February 2003.

The overseas cable that the Cardwell telegraph line was built to meet never arrived: in 1872 it was connected at Darwin instead of the Gulf of Carpentaria, so the office's main purpose did not materialise. The line still served settlers in the Gulf region.