celebration

This is actually a menu for a military Christmas Dinner, not a booklet.

Charters Towers, the town they call ‘The World', was born to the sound of thunder and flashes of lightning. Hugh Mosman, George Clarke, John Fraser and their horse boy Jupiter had been prospecting to the south of what is now Charters Towers when their horses scattered during a fierce thunderstorm. It was while searching for the horses the next morning that the first Towers gold was discovered. The discovery point was just near the modern day intersection of Mosman Street, Rainbow Road and Black Jack Road and was at the end of the year 1871 or the very beginning of 1872. The party returned to Ravenswood to register their find which they named Charters Towers: 'Charters' for W.S.E.M. Charters, the Gold Commissioner - the big man from the Cape (Charters was said to be about 6'6" tall and weighed some 20 stone) and 'Towers' because of the conical shaped hills in the vicinity of the discovery. Mosman Street The rush to the place was immediate, with men from the south of the colony arriving as early as March. By the end of the month, 25 claims were laid off as far north as the St Patrick, south-east to the Washington and west to the North Australian. A business area with better access to a permanent water supply was marked out as well on a low ridge north of Mosman's Camp with its main thoroughfare named Mosman Street. Here the first storekeepers, blacksmiths, butchers and hoteliers went to work. "For a long time the buildings, business and private, were of a typical new goldfield variety - calico or bark - and leading hotels were constructed of saplings stuck into the ground and lined with calico, the whole being covered with iron." Source: www.visitcharterstowers.com.au/about/history-heritage

The Bellevue Hotel was erected in 1886 occupying the site on the corner of George and Alice Streets, Brisbane, Queensland. The building was of three storey construction featuring cast iron balustrading on the wrap around verandahs, with posts supporting a curved corrugated iron roof. A steep pitched roof shows two mansard roofs with cast iron cresting and chimneys. In April 1979, under instruction from Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the building was demolished after midnight by local contractors, the Deen Brothers, who had police protection. A crowd of over 700 protestors looked on in horror after failing to save the beautiful old building. Source; www.bonzle.com/c/a?a=pic&fn=fkfx3gmb&s=3