Charters Towers

Charters Towers sits about 135 kilometres inland from Townsville, at the edge of the dry country. In the 1870s, gold was found here by a thirteen-year-old boy, and within a decade the town had grown into one of the wealthiest in Queensland — a full city, with its own stock exchange, banks, and the nickname it still carries: The World.

It doesn't feel like that now. What's left is quieter — wide streets, nineteenth-century facades, a gold battery still standing in the scrub. We came through on a separate trip, not part of the long coastal run but out start to the inland run

A few days in Charters before heading further west

Charters Township Charters Towers from above, the grid of streets running out to the edge of the scrub. Still clearly a town built for more people than it currently holds.

Wallabies at Tower Hill Wallabies on the rocks at Tower Hill, including a joey at an age where it has opinions about sitting still.

Large python Think twice before fossicking for gold in the scrub around Charters Towers — you might find more than you bargained for.

Bustard!! An Australian bustard in the dry grass outside town. Unhurried. Largely unbothered

Venus gold battery The Venus Battery, established 1872. One of the few remaining stamp batteries in Queensland — built to crush quartz and extract the gold from it

Gold machine Inside the battery: timber, iron, and silence. The machinery that once ran day and night across the entire goldfield.

Venus gold battery map A period diagram of the Venus Battery layout — ore, water, stamps, and tables, arranged with the logic of extraction.

Burdekin River Broad, flat, and copper-coloured after rain. The bridge crossing marks the edge of the tablelands.

Petrified Wood A piece of petrified wood from below the weir.