TUESDAY 1 DECEMBER     CHARTERS TOWERS

It is the first day of summer. Up here that is, officially, the start of the cyclone season.

We visited the Tourist Information Centre, where I added to the information I’d picked up previously, in other places, about this area and places further south we might go.

Then we walked and looked at some of the superb old buildings. John went and browsed in the Mining Museum; I wandered about, window shopping and put in a film for processing.  Picked it up after an hour and was satisfied with the photos.

We inspected the old Stock Exchange Arcade, which is superb. Yes – Charters Towers was so important because of its rich gold mining that it had its own stock exchange, from 1890 to 1916. This facilitated the trading of shares in the various mining companies, on the world stage. The arcade has an intricately tiled floor, and there is a barreled vault roof and stained glass use.  There are little shops tucked in behind columns, inside. Maybe these were once stock brokers’ offices?

After lunch we did the tourist drive, as outlined in some of the gumpf I collected. This took us out to the weir on the nearby Burdekin River. There was a lot of water pounding over this – quite awesome to look at. It would be tremendous in a flood time.

The rest of the drive was just so-so.

There was a lot of lightning happening, within the clouds to the SE, later in the afternoon.

After tea of steak, salad and mushrooms, we drove to the Rotary Lookout to try – unsuccessfully – to take photos of the lightning.

I really like that this town is preserving and maintaining so many of its grand old buildings.