To escape the tyranny of being hunched over a computer for hours, day after day , this blogger joined a star trek flight to Charters Towers , an early Australian goldrush boomtown which was so fabulously rich it was called The World.
During its heyday , the Queensland town had its own stock exchange, above, now converted and containing a café , bookshop, gallery , mining museum and the electorate office of the Queensland Katter's Australia Party Shane Knuth , which made three calls a day, fortunes made and lost , a resident rode a horse on which its shoes were made of gold , there were 92 pubs catering for thirsty miners and this wild west town was the second largest in Queensland .
Gold was first found in 1871 by Aborigine Jupiter Mosman , the area so rich that 1600 ounces of gold were picked up on the surface of the Washington Reef , the biggest nugget found, The Prince of Wales , 143 ounces.
Our trip from Townsville was aboard the space transporter Yaris piloted by seasoned long distance Darwin traveller Sara who provided a survival kit which included several packs of her famous curried egg sandwiches, muffins and a thermos .
Dodging gravitational waves, stray cattle and marsupials , we landed in Charters Towers as the chain store Overflow , recently placed into administration, was selling all stock at half price, bargain hunters streaming into the shop , in Townsville , Cairns and elsewhere as well , another blow to the North Queensland economy.
A must see attraction , the Zara Clark Museum , is jam packed with items from the town's golden past , including a large section dealing with WWl and the many miners who went off and were killed , the battle of the Somme the subject of a current special display .
The helpful volunteer staff turned up information in their archives about the Morcom family, a member of which , Albert , born in Charters Towers , later went to Alice Springs and then became one of the "Borroloola Hermits" in the Gulf country of the Northern Territory .
There he wrote colourful stories about the area for Glenville Pike's North Australian Monthly magazine and the Northern Territory News in Darwin . Journalist, author Keith Willey mentioned Morcom in his book , Eaters of the Lotus
There he wrote colourful stories about the area for Glenville Pike's North Australian Monthly magazine and the Northern Territory News in Darwin . Journalist, author Keith Willey mentioned Morcom in his book , Eaters of the Lotus
Shortly before he died in 1964 , Morcom was visited in Darwin Hospital by Pike and complained that the nurses had shaved off his beard .
A museum member said she had recently been reading some of Pike's books, again showing how popular his works are , despite the fact that the Territory neglected his great contribution to the spread of knowledge about the history and daily life of the entire north of Australia.
There is an impressive display of donated Toby jugs and associated items in the museum and Little Darwin was surprised to find that an unusual teapot of ours was in the collection , identified as Darby and Joan , unfortunately fitting for our stage in life.
A new " golden" era is expected in Charters Towers as work is expected to start next month on a 43MW solar farm.
NEXT: Unexpected landing on another planet-the old gold mining town of Ravenswood with welcoming ladies of the night , weird decorated skulls and the pub taken over by schoolgirls .
