We had a lush grassy green site at Charters Towers. It was blissful after the dusty, dirty outback of the past few weeks. We ventured into Charters see what was going on in this very country cowboy town.
Surprisingly not a lot. It was Sunday. We found a coffee shop open, the foodworks supermarket and of course Maccas. (Looking totally out of place in the Main Street full of character buildings). It was nice to walk leisurely along the street and take some photos of the beautiful old buildings that had been beautifully renovated and were now repurposed for other uses both community oriented and for private businesses.
Having no choice but to head to the one cafe that was open, we had a coffee at the Stock exchange Cafe. It had a lovely patch of green grass out the back so The Captain could frollick after he had received his fair share of admiration and pats on his way through the arcade to reach it.
Continuing a leisurely walk on the grass around the back so he could toilet and found some public toilets so we were all taken care of. Score!
As we made our way around the block, we noticed signs for a Sunday market in the CWA hall. Unfortunately, the ladies were loading all their stock into tubs and putting it back into their cars. We marvelled at how in earth we could have missed the signs. They were literally right opposite where we had parked the car. We summized that our need for coffee must have been so great that it rendered us absolutely delirious and blinded to anything else that was going on around us other than where to get our fix. Any kind of addiction is worrying. Even a coffee addiction!
We headed to the Visitor Information Center which wasn’t far on foot. When we got there we were 5 minutes past closing time. Ray was bitterly disappointed and pouted extensively. It was our own fault. We always tell everyone that the first thing you need to do is visit the visitor information center in every town that you go to. These are the best point of contacts for the best information on the area.
Many visitor information centers are more , than just places where you can get brochures. Often they have museums attached, excellent displays, and things like public toilets. Sometimes there are opportunities for filling up your vans with free water (or for a nominal fee) and we’ve even seen centres that allow you to shower.
So we should’ve taken our own advice and gone to the visitor information center as soon as we got into Charters Towers yesterday. I think we learned a valuable lesson. There was nothing to it than to be our own tour guide. I quickly got onto Google and worked out the places we needed to go and the things we needed to see.
Every town (most of them anyway) have a lookout. We headed to the Backlands Hill Rotary Lookout this gave us a nice view of the most of Charters Towers. There was a commemorative plaque to those who the town had lost in the Second World War. We paused to remember and then drove to our next destination.
The helpful lady this morning in the caravan park told us to take a ride out of town to the Weir. It was only 12 km away and the afternoon stretched ahead, so we decided to do just that. At the beginning of the drive we came across a couple of signs that said that the Weir was closed. This would deter most people…but not us!
We kept going. A couple of shallow river crossings later. We arrived at yet another sign that announced that the weir was closed. This still didn’t stop us. Pressing on, we drove til we came to the weir. It had obviously suffered damage from the recent flooding and a simple padlock on a gate kept out anyone from venturing further. “Never in Victoria!” I thought. Always the over regulated state and it’s inhabitants never to be trusted to do the right thing, there would be armed guards and barbed wire, actually we wouldn’t be able to venture this far at all.
There were people still enjoying the grassed areas and we were able to get some photos of the water running through the weir into the Burdekin River.
There was a display showing the upgrade of the weir walls over the years. How high the weir had been raised and the improve in the quality of blocks used..Clearly it was due for another upgrade and for the wall height to be raised higher.
The road out of Charters Towers on the way to Townsville has been earmarked as a tourist destination. The caravan park lady also mentioned it to Ray and said it is worth a look see. We did a detour and went past. It is a new retail section and there are lots of signs up encouraging you to open up a new business.
Ray left the car running with Henry inside while he and I popped outside for a couple of quick photos. Then he returned to the car while I went to have a closer look. After a good look around and spending a little bit longer than I thought I would, I returned to the car totally blown away by what I had seen. This was one of the best tourist attractions I can ever remember seeing. I encouraged Ray to go and have a look for himself.
Somewhere in Charters Towers there was a tourist committee, who had really put their heads together and come up with a tremendous idea, (and a huge budget), and really thought about what was important in the history of charters towers, and what tourists would like to see (and be blown away by). They had delivered. The big, silver world on its pedestal resembled the big silver bean that we saw in Chicago, USA. The granite that was used to engrave all the details about the history of charters towers in the area must’ve cost an absolute bomb because it was inlaid with gold and was so heavy and solid. We learned a lot about the history of the area and its gold rush days. It was so well done.
There were places you could sit and relax, and they had kept the feeling of the character with the bollards that they used around the area. It was so well done and so worth the visit.
As we left, we saw a mural painted on the side of the new shops that depicted the history of Charters Towers. The whole tourist attraction was by no means finished but showed what an impressive effort was being made to attract visitors to the area to share in the history of the area. Really worth a visit.
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