clouds

trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/63616320# - this pic appeared in the Illustrated Sydney News on 14th March, 1891...but I suspect the pic might have been taken a few years earlier...if you zoom in, over at Circular Quay there looks to be scaffolding around the Customs House...so the James Barnet rebuild (completed ?1887) might still be in progress. The Mort & Co wool store extension looks complete...the extension was built in 1884-86...I can't see the 1886 extension to the Harrison Jones & Devlin wool store (in Loftus St, opposite Customs House)...but that might be because it's obscured...

Burnett Bridge is a heritage-listed road bridge crossing the Burnett River from Quay Street, Bundaberg Central to Perry Street, Bundaberg North in Bundaberg, Bundaberg Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Alfred Barton Brady and built in 1900. It is also known as Burnett River Traffic Bridge. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992. In the 1870s the first bridges were built as ferries could no longer cope with increasing traffic across the River. It was in the 1880s, however, with the establishment of the sugar industry in the region, that Bundaberg boomed. Handsome and substantial masonry buildings began to rise in the city as evidence of its growing importance and prosperity. The first bridges were timber and became weakened by heavy traffic. Two more substantial metal replacements, not only capable of taking heavier loads but of matching the general upgrading of Bundaberg's commercial center were planned. The smaller of the two, over Bundaberg Creek, a tributary of the Burnett River and the eastern boundary of the city, was opened in December 1899 and is known as the Kennedy Bridge. When it was opened the Burnett Bridge was the fifth-longest metal truss bridge in Australia. Although the river had been bridged by the Burnett railway bridge in 1891, the traffic bridge was viewed by the public as being of great importance for the continuing progress of Bundaberg. Burnett Bridge joins Quay Street, Bundaberg with Perry Street, North Bundaberg, across the Burnett River. It is 412 meters (1,352 ft) in length and has eight 51.9 long spans with cylindrical piers and concrete abutments. The bridge carries a 7.3 meters (24 ft) roadway and a footpath. The road is on transverse metal troughing spanning between the lower chords of hog-back lattice trusses. The bridge has aesthetic appeal and is an important landmark in the city. The spans of the bridge are supported by pairs of piers in the form of Tuscan order columns with circular cross-bracing between them producing a striking effect. It is an important example of its type and combines technical quality with aesthetic appeal, making a substantial contribution to the Bundaberg townscape. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnett_Bridge

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