In recent months eight books dealing with the fabulous, boisterous goldrush past of Queensland's Charters Towers and its modern literary output have been collected by this blog. The two books shown here, both signed by the author , Michael Brumby ,were in a cluster of four .
The Charters Towers goldrush kicked off on Christmas Eve 1871 when a prospecting party which included Hugh Mosman , from Sydney, who had an Aboriginal " horse boy ", Jupiter , found gold nuggets in a stream. Many years later, a casino in Townsville was named Jupitor's .
An early mine was called Washington and men , overseas money and machinery poured in .
At one stage in its booming history Charters Towers was called The World , described in l898 as being superior in wealth, equal in commerce ,culture and refinement to any city of the same population in the Empire.
This included 35 hotels , one needing 30 barmaids to handle the Saturday night rush .
In 1886 the Charters Towers goldfield was a feature in London at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition , resulting in many investment companies being floated .
A number of lively newspapers were produced in Charters Towers , the editors of which were colourful , combative and vociferous . The Australian Republican was the official Labor organ , replaced by The Eagle and The New Eagle. Other papers were The Northern Mining Register, the weekly edition of the Northern Miner , and The North Queensland Register .
The editor, publisher , historian, artist and columnist , the late Glenville Park, literally struck gold in Charters Towers when he moved there in 1957 to research its old newspapers going back to 1891 , stored away in the town hall .
He went to the Northern Miner office and the editor showed him a box which included wooden type, large letters used for making headings and posters.
Pike aptly described the newspaper trove as a goldmine, some of it bound in, some loose, torn, knocked about , eventually ending up in the Oxley Library , Brisbane.
He recalled that there was a choral group in town called The Curlews .
A horse was said to have shoes made from gold, fortunes were made and lost in its own stock exchange , two books found dealing with the exchange, which had three daily calls .
The arcade in which the exchange was located has been restored and is one of the many attractions of Charters Towers , where mining coninues .
