Charters Towers

Gold was found at Charters Towers in 1871, and for two decades the town ran hard enough to support its own stock exchange and to be called The World by people who claimed you could get anything here. When the reef gold ran out the money left and the buildings stayed. Gill and Mosman Streets still carry deep verandahs, iron lacework and rendered facades from the 1880s and 1890s, with the restored Stock Exchange Arcade at the centre of it. The town is quiet now, a service centre for cattle country and a boarding school town, which is part of the appeal: you can stand in the middle of the street and read the whole boom off the frontages.

History

On Christmas Eve 1871 a 12-year-old Aboriginal boy, Jupiter Mosman, looking for horses that had bolted in a lightning storm, found both them and a gold nugget in a creek below Towers Hill, while travelling with the prospectors Hugh Mosman, James Fraser and George Clarke; the town takes the rest of its name from the gold commissioner W. S. E. M. Charters, and ten major reefs were worked. It became a borough on 21 June 1877, the railway to Townsville was finished in December 1882, and in the boom years between 1872 and 1899 it had its own stock exchange and 27,500 people, the largest city in Queensland outside Brisbane, nicknamed The World (Wikipedia, Charters Towers).

The main sights

• The Stock Exchange Arcade - the restored 1880s arcade that housed the town's own exchange.
• Gill and Mosman Streets - continuous rows of verandahed commercial buildings from the boom.
• The Venus Battery - the surviving ore crushing plant on the edge of town.
• Towers Hill - the rise above town with mining remnants and a view over the grid.

When to go

The dry season, May to September, is the time to walk here; summer brings heat well into the thirties with humidity and afternoon storms. Mornings are best for the streets, before the sun gets onto the western frontages. Several sites, the battery included, run on limited tour times, so check at the information centre before setting out.

Good to know

This is a working country town with empty shopfronts among the good ones, and it can feel closed on weekends. Several heritage buildings can only be seen from outside. Heat between October and March is punishing for a walking visit. There is not a great deal beyond the streetscape once you have covered it, so half a day is realistic rather than pessimistic.

Nearby

Townsville and the coast lie east; the highway west runs on into cattle country.

Key facts