We spent a few days in the little outback town of Charters Towers recently. It is a pretty neat town - it sprang up in the middle of nowhere when gold was found there on December 24th, 1871, and unlike a lot of gold boom towns, has continued to thrive. The gold is pretty much all gone but there is still a pretty good tourist trade and farming work nearby.
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| At one time there were 92 hotels in the city - now there are less than 10! Here is the first ever hotel in Charters, built in 1888. |
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Charters used to be the 2nd biggest city in Queensland! This probably only seems significant if you visit there and see how small it is. The journey from Townsville took us about 2 hours; during the gold boom it would take 2 and a half days by coach.
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| A wall mural of the gold mines. They are really proud of their history in Charters! |
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| There are loads of old mine shafts around the town |
We had a go at panning for gold ourselves! It was fun, but it hurts your arms a bit. Mathias got some really big chunks out of his "lucky dip" (a cup of dirt that they give you, it is down to luck whether you get any gold out of it or not) as you can see from his blog. I, however, just got a tiny few flakes and let's just say I was less than pleased about this :P
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| Mathias' new beard idol |
The big thing to do in Charters is to go to Tower Hill and watch the sun set, so that's what we did:
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| I'm so arty |
Finally, here are a couple of pictures of our on the road life:
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| Actually reading the instructions before putting up the tent! That is a special guy right there. |
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| A man's home is his castle |
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| Dinner time! With a side of flies. |
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| A lovely relaxing shower.............. |
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