clouds

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

trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/163799609/16798677 - this pic appeared in the Sydney Mail on 25th December, 1897...in a 'Sketcher' article titled 'Kosciusko in Spring Time', by photographer Charles Kerry...see pic on 2nd page of link...bottom rhs... Several other pics in the PHM's collection also appeared in the Sydney Mail's pictorial...see comments/links here www.flickr.com/photos/powerhouse_museum/3593606829/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A similar pictorial, titled 'The Ascent of Kosciusko', appeared in the Australian Town and Country Journal on this same date...see comments/links here... www.flickr.com/photos/powerhouse_museum/3594416848/

Lois Duncan Steinmetz (1934-2016).