Charters Towers

HARTERS TOWERS is arguably Queensland’s most architecturally impressive inland city. Gold was discovered in the district in 1871 and in 1897 the editor of the , David Green, observed. “The well-wooded and comparatively flat basin surrounding the small ridges below the Gap, through which the pioneers came, has long since been denuded of its trees,” he documented. “Streets of fine shops and residences have sprung up, cold air stores, telephones, electric light, gaslight, electric fans and other adjuncts of up-to-date civilisation are employed, and 20,000 souls now sleep nightly within a radius of four miles of the spot where the prospectors pitched their first camp a little over 25 years ago. The three workers of that time have increased to 4000 with nearly three quarters of a million pounds worth of machinery to aid in the hunt for gold.”