Charters Towers

14/8/13 – Well they say there is one in every crowd and we had one last night. Large number of campers and all were pretty good and quiet but there was one who ran his generator until 10.30pm. And he had a noise deflector on his side so he didn’t get the noise but the rest of us did. At the same time we should be thankful that he ran it as at least it is white noise and it covered up the noise of his loud TV, which he probably had loud due to the genie. There can be a lot of negative thoughts towards people who have generators and run them and with inconsiderate people like last night it’s understandable. You just don’t do that. For the most part we run our genie when no one is around, if we have to use it we go and see our neighbours and let them know we are going to run it for a short time and never after 7pm. So please be considerate to your fellow campers and do the right thing.

We now have a page on camping etiquette which came about by conversation, feedback and input from several camping groups. So the points are not our views alone.

Charters Towers is one of the towns that we always seem to miss, this time we were determined to call in. Like many country towns it came into being in the gold boom between 1872 and 1899. During this period with a population of 27,000 it was Qld largest city outside of Brisbane and operated one of the few regional stock exchanges. Charters Towers was also known as “The World” as it was said that anything one might desire could be had in the Towers, leaving no reason to travel elsewhere. From what we could see it still provides a lot of what people would need.


First stop was the info centre to grab some information on the area. They also show a short 6 min video on the town history as well as some of the others things to do in town. A gold coin donation is requested.

From there you can pick up a brochure on the Heritage Walking trail where you can see many of the old restored buildings. The main shopping street is full of old buildings.

Royal-Private-Hotel City-Hall

The Stock Exchange Arcade was built as the Royal Arcade in 1888 and became the Stock Exchange in 1890. Amazing restored building with the “Calling of the cards” with a wooden representation of the stock prices being called. No computers back then. The little show is listed to happen on a regularly bases but it’s a bit hit and miss so we were told to ask at the gift shop, which we did and the lady put it on for us.

Stock-Exchange-Arcade Calling-of-the-cards

There are a few murals around town; the largest can be seen in the car park wall in Mossman St. Only issue is there are cars parked there, so hard to get a full photo without cars.


It is worth a drive up to Towers Hill, not only for the view over the city but for the lovely breeze. There are several information boards with information about the town’s history. People go up there to watch the sunset and then you can watch the film “Ghosts after dark” bookings have to be made at the info centre at a cost of $10 each.

Towers-Hill Town-went-wild Towers-Hill-Lookout Towers-Hill-Lookout-1

There are also 30 WW2 ammunition bunkers hidden around the hill, we counted over 15 in the area where we were.

WW2-Bunkers WW2-Bunker-well-hidden WW2-Bunker

There are many others things to do in Charters Towers like tours of the Venus Gold Battery $15 for adults, the Miners Cottage $6 adult entry, Zara Clark Museum $5 entry, CD self-drive tour of the area, $5 + $10 refundable deposit. Our complaint of the area is a lot of the well-publicized things to see and do cost money.

After lunch we put in a few more km heading south to Emerald. Not a lot of places to pull off for the night on this road. We eventually found a spot at a Blue Metal Motel, reasonable sized area that we have to ourselves, approx 125 km north of Clermont. Not too sure about their valet service though 🙂

Gravel-Pit-overnight Gravel-Pit-wreck

Click on the link above for a larger version in Google Maps of the days travels.