Dear all,
Weather fantastic .... 25 or 26 every day; cold nights though.
Charters Towers is a very sophisticated nice town built on gold mining, and now mining other metals here, and there are a lot of cattle properties. We arrived last Thursday after leaving Clermont, and Belyando River Crossing where we were going to stay but decided it was not an option once we saw it. It was just a dust bowl, a truck stop full of rough and tough blokes and road trains full of cattle!!! So we kept on going to here.
The main attractions here are the city centre and its really nice old buildings and what they have done to them. They aren't just empty buildings, they have actual businesses and govt departments occupying them. You can go in and have a look around most and they have set up scenes of the original people and happenings. They have just done a good job in beautifying the cbd and the town is classified by the National Trust.
The good news is that they have a big dam 17 kms out of town called the Burdekin Dam. When they had the floods in January this year, it has apparently washed down saltwater crocs from above Ingham, would you believe. They have seen 2 salties in the dam in the last 3 weeks - one about 20 feet long and the other about 15 feet long. They washed down with the flood waters, and got to this dam wall, and there they stay. It has put an end to swimming and fishing and all that stuff, and we don't know what they will do. They can apparently adapt to fresh water quite well.
From here we leave Thursday and go to Hughenden, then Julia Creek, and then we have to go to Mt. Isa out of context to get our awning fixed (a slide broke and needs replacing and Mt. Isa is the closest place). Then we'll go north to Gulf of Carpentaria.
Photos above:
Sign for Game Chillers at Clermont
Cattle Station outside Charters Towers
Charters Towers from Tower Hill
Copper "headstones" at the Copperfield cemetery
"Salties" in the Burdekin
Flood Indicator at Burdekin River
Game Chillers at Clermont
"Shoe" tree at Clermont
Shut the gate sign at Charters Towers airport
Burdekin River bridge
Piano tree at Clermont
The Imperial, pub at Ravenswood
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