An official Charters Towers website , however , states Jupiter was a 12-year-old stockman ,travelling with the prospecting team of Hugh Mosman ,George Clarke and James Fraser,
He is said to have come across " a bright glimmer of gold " in a stream while looking for missing horses . Another write up describes Jupiter as having been 13, a servant .
Hugh Mosman was the son of a prominent Sydney pioneering family . The Sydney suburb of Mosman is named after his father, Archibald Mosman ( 1799-1863) and his twin brother, George. In 1831 they had been given a four acre land grant , part of which became Mosman's Bay, from which they conducted shipping , whaling and grazing .
Young Hugh Mosman , educated at King's School, Parramatta, went off to Queensland in 1860 hoping to make his pile as a grazier . On a visit to the Kynuna cattle station , he took a liking to a young Aboriginal boy and named him Jupiter , because his eyes were said to have been large, luminous and as limpid as a planet .
He took the lad back to his station. Made " penniless" in the 1866 slump, Mosman went prospecting west of Ravenswood with Clarke and Fraser, during which Jupiter found Australia's richest goldfield .
There being three hills near the find ,Mosman named the area Charters Tors (Towers) in honour of W.S.E.M. Charters , the Ravenswood mining warden . He made a fortune , was appointed an early magistrate , elected to the Legislative Council .
After blowing off part of his left forearm in a dynamite explosion , Mosman returned to Sydney, taking Jupiter with him . There Jupiter attended school at Newtown , went to Lyndhurst College and was baptised a Roman Catholic , given the name John Joseph (Jupiter) Mosman .
Hugh Mosman returned to booming Charters Towers with Jupiter in 1891 , enjoyed steeplechase riding . While he remained unmarried, his sisters married two former premiers .
In the case of Jupiter , he became a drover . He was "allowed " to enter the Eventide Home at Charters Towers after a petition was presented to parliament by townspeople on the grounds of his historical association with the founding of the city , his photograph from Wikipedia .
While in the Eventide Home he struck gold yet again - shared second prize in the Golden Casket with a local taxi driver . His share was a mere 83 pound .
A newspaper account of his win recalled that " as a little black boy " he had shared in the discovery of the fabulous Charters Towers goldfield , which called itself The World and had its own stock exchange . He was thought to be 84 or 85 when he died in 1945 , his grave below .
Townsville once sported Jupiter's Casino , now called the Ville . The Jupiter Mosman Cooperative Society provides accommodation services for Indigenous people in Charters Towers.
The Charters Towers main street is named after Mosman and there is a boomerang shaped monument in his honour in Lissner Park , Isador Lissner being a German immigrant who made his fortune in Charters Towers , mentioned recently in this blog .
