Day 14 Charters Towers

Today was another red letter day.  We washed, dried and put away the winter clobber.  I wonder how long before we get it out again.

We had a wander around Charters Towers today.  I started off by driving up Towers Hil,l the site of the original gold discovery.  It is pretty much a well worked over landscape now, riddled with mine shafts and tunnels with the original surface covered in mining spoil.  But it does offer a good view of CT and the surrounding countryside.

This afternoon we went into the business centre and took a few photos.  The best of them are attached below.

Now, I have to tell you something of the traditional custodians of this part of the world, the Gudjal People.
The Gudjal were not a nomadic people but travelled widely around a known area of country to which they felt a strong connection.  The arrival of european settlers in the 1860's signalled the end of their normal way of life.  To quote the local information booklet, they were driven from their ceremonial places, denied access to their usual sources of food and water and saw the land damaged by cattle grazing.  They tried to fight back but could not overcome the forces arrayed against them and over time became subsumed into the new community that was developing here.  They became an important source of labour in the pastoral industry, Today, their contribution to the industry is being recognised.

I should also say something about the caravan park, the Charters Towers Tourist Park.  It is a Top Ten park with good access to good sized sites that are mostly shady.  The amenities are a bit on the small size but very clean and tidy.  We would stay here again.

Tomorrow we travel across to Townsville and then rejoin the real world at the Bruce Highway as we drive up to Wongaling Beach, near Mission Beach. Lots of trucks and caravans and probably heaps of roadworks.  I can hardly wait.

Anyway, here are today's photos.

Charters Towers; doesn't look so big from up here
on Towers Hill

Some of the landscape around CT

Like all old Australian gold towns, many of the public
and commercial buildings still exist, enjoying
a second lease of life as something else.

Gill St,  if you ignore the cars and the paved roads, you see this street almost as it was in the 1880's

The caravan park; nice and shady