We had 3 days of just doing things locally around Alice Springs, and also just trying to catch up on some rest and down time. It’s been just over 6 weeks now that we’ve been travelling and everyone is starting to show signs of weariness. We seem to need to have a lot more down time each day than we did at the start. So we’re taking longer to see things at each place now.

Our first day at Alice we saw the Overland Telegraph Station, the Royal Flying Doctor Service Visitors Centre and went grocery shopping (not everyone did all of them).

– The Overland Telegraph Station Historical Reserve was very interesting. It was a part of Australia’s history which I hadn’t known about previously, and was one of the main factors influencing the opening up of the centre of Australia to European settlement. In the first half of the 1800s, the only means of communication from England and Europe was via letters on ships – taking at least 6 weeks to reach Australia. In 1838, Samuel Morse invented Morse Code and this allowed for messages to be sent over telegraph wires from one country to another in a matter of minutes. This was occurring in England and Europe for a decade or so before it came to Australia. First telegraph wires had to be laid under the sea. This was completed in 1872 with the messages from overseas coming in to Darwin. But then how to get the messages from Darwin to the more inhabited parts of Australia? Adelaide was keen for the telegraph line to come to them, but so was Queensland. Adelaide won out as the governor of SA  pledged to pay for it themselves and to have it completed in 2 years. It was completed in 19months which was a pretty impressive achievement.  Several repeater stations were located along the route, which needed to be manned. Alice Springs had one of them. The station was built near the site of the ‘spring’ which AS was named after, on the Todd River. The historical area that we walked around had the original postal and telegraph office, complete with a working morse code machine to try out sending messages to each other. There were all the updated machines and accessories displayed also. We could walk through the original house of the station master, the barracks for other workers, the blacksmith workshop, the ‘garage’ for the buggies, the horse stables and yards and the camel yards. There was information about the different station masters and their families. It was indicated that one of the families – the Bradshaw family – had a book written about their time there – I found the book that afternoon at the local shops and bought it. After walking around the site, we went down to the Todd River, which was just a dry river bed at this time of the year. However we had read about the water being just a short way under the sand, so the kids decided to find out just how far down it was – they dug down about 20cm and struck water. The girls had a bit of a play there for 20mins or so while Sam went climbing on the rocks on the other side of the river bed.

– The RFDS visitor centre was somewhere Michael wanted to visit. I said I would do grocery shopping instead. Sam decided to go with Michael to the RFDS. Hannah and Beth really needed some down time – they were getting a bit over the tours of different places. Lauren said she would be happy to stay at the van with them while they watched a movie. It was helpful that we could do this. 

– Anzac Hill was the name of the tallest hill within AS and it had a lookout at the top. We had read that dawn or dusk were the best times to go up there and see the view of the McDonnell Ranges all around (due to the colours at that time. So we did this the first evening – we went up about 5.45 and watched the sunset over the West McDonnell Ranges. It was lovely.

Our 2nd day we went to the Alice Springs Desert Park from about 9am-2pm, and then we had a rest for the remainder of the day.

– AS Desert Park is a few acres of land just outside AS and tucked in under the ranges. It is an educational park on all things to do with the desert and the red centre and it is very well done. We had read to get there earlyish as there were a few talks and shows before midday. We arrived just after 9am. At 10am there was a free flight bird show where the birds had been trained to fly in to the open amphitheater on cue for the ranger to talk about them. The birds often flew right above our heads. There were eagles, kites, tawny frogmouths and barn owls among others. It was a fabulous show. We also sat in on a talk about aboriginal culture and their use of bush medicine and bush tucker. Lauren especially found it fascinating all the plants in the bush that could be used for tucker – she loves the bush and is now keen to find out more about the local bush plants around where we live. There were 3 sections of the park showcasing 3 different landscape types in the dessert – the woodland habitat, the desert rivers and the sand country. We each had our own audio guide handset and would press a number on the handset when we came to that area and it would tell about something about that habitat/plant/animal. This was great for Hannah and Bethany especially as it gave them a sense of ownership of finding out about things – much more than if we’d just tried to tell them things. There was also a nocturnal house in which we were able to see lots of the desert animals that come out in the cool of the night – like bandicoots, bilbys, desert frogs, etc. many of these animals are endangered. The other reason we are glad we went early is because by 11.30, it was getting quite hot. We had to have lots of drinks of water. By 1.30pm, we were ready to go back to the caravan for a rest. 

– the kids had a swim in the rather cold swimming pool at the caravan park and a play on the playground.

– Michael had been planning to do some flying at Alice Springs and had arranged the previous day to do a check flight with an instructor at 4pm today. He couldn’t take any of the children on this check flight, so he went and did that on his own while the kids and I had some down time at the caravan.

Day 3 was scenic tours over the West McDonnell Ranges care of Michael Branch Scenic Flights. After ‘passing’ his check flight the previous day, he now wanted to take the family up for a flight over the West McDonnell ranges. Initially he thought he could take all 4 children with him because Hannah and Beth’s combined weights are under the usual weight limit for 1 adult. However he then realised the aero club rules wouldn’t allow this. So he did 2 flights – first with Hannah, Beth and I (Lauren and Sam waiting at the car down below) and then with Lauren and Sam. Each flight was about 50mins and we went over some amazing scenery. It was great seeing the ranges from up above. The kids all really enjoyed it, although I think Sam’s eyes were shining the most afterwards – he thoroughly enjoys the flying with Dad.

We then had another afternoon of down time, and Bethany actually had a nap (which she rarely does these days) – she really needed it – Mum had one too:)

We planned for the following 2 days to be day trips out into the West McDonnell Ranges, so they would be a bit more full.

We have had 3 days here at Alice Springs now, doing some things locally, which I will blog about soon.
Tomorrow and the next day we are planning 2 days of ‘day trips’ out into the West McDonnell Ranges where there are some beautiful gorges, chasms and waterholes to see. We’ll come back to our caravan at Alice Springs each night. Then we will head down to Uluru and Kings Canyon – taking about 3 or 4 days to do that. Then we’ll be heading back north towards Katherine to stay with my sister Liz for a few days. Will blog when I can, but some days are so busy I don’t get time.
Love to all, Andrea

After Mt Isa, we were heading into the NT, and particularly for Alice Springs. There was really only one way – along the Barkly Hwy to the 3 Ways and then south along the Stuart Hwy. We decided that, rather than stop at Tennant Creek and other places on our way to Alice Springs, we would have 2 long days of driving and go straight to the Alice, then see those other sights on our way back up to Katherine.

The first day, Camooweal was really the only town we drove through, about 188km out of Mt Isa. We stopped at a rest area here for morning tea. A few kms down the road we passed into the NT. We stopped for a photo. Another 66km further along was a locality called Avon Downs Police Station – and that’s all it was – a police station opposite a rest area. The police were doing random breath testing – it seemed an odd place to be doing that – and at about 11.30am. We then went through a couple more small localities over the next 200km, including Soudan and Barkly Homestead. It was all quite flat and sparse dessert landscape. We stopped at Barkly Homestead to fill up with petrol and have some afternoon tea (after having premade sandwiches in the car for lunch). We sat on a grassy area near the service station and watched the bull that was calmly grazing there nearby! We then did another 100kms to an overnight rest area where we had decided to try our first ‘free camping’ night. We pulled in about 4.30pm and there were already about 10 other camping vehicles there – it wasn’t going to be a nice secluded night under the stars! But it was friendly – a group of grey nomads were sitting all together having afternoon drinks and gave us a wave as we pulled up.

The kids all really enjoyed this night of free camping – mainly because we let them make a fire after dinner and roast marshmallows. Sam is so used to doing the fires at home in our fireplace that he mostly got it going all by himself. Before dinner the kids had been playing in the red dirt – I decided it was going to be a futile exercise to try to keep them clean – so had a bucket of warm soapy water ready for them to have a sponge down before dinner and then again after the fire, before going to bed.

The 2nd day we got going just after 8.30 and travelled the last 100 or so kms of the Barkly Hwy to the Three Ways, which is what they call the T junction where the Barkly Hwy going east- west meets the Stuart  going north-south. We turned left to go south and about 10km later we were in Tennant Creek. This was one of the stops on the Overland Telegraph and there were a few things to do and see there, but at this stage we just passed straight through. About 100kms past Tennant Creek, we came to the sign indicating the loop road to the Devil’s Marbles conservation reserve. Since it was a loop road and not a side road, we decided we would take that road and break the journey a bit with a stop to view this amazing geological feature. We came up to the first carpark area and Sam’s first comments were “Yay, somewhere to climb”! I wasn’t sure at first if there were any restrictions on climbing (both from a safety point of view and an aboriginal culture point of view). But there were no signs and then some other tourists came along and started climbing. We walked along a track for about 100m and climbed up a large rock to view the reserve from this lookout – just an amazing feast for the eyes. We climbed back down and took some photos of everyone ‘holding up’ the ‘marbles’ perched on other rocks. The kids had a climb for a while and then we drove a little further along the loop road to another carpark area which there were some informative signs about the landscape. We stopped here for another 10-15mins and then had some lunch before continuing our journey. We drove through Wauchope, Wycliffe Well and Barrow Creek, all fairly small localities. Then we reached Ti-Tree where we decided to stop at a playground for the kids to stretch their legs and have some afternoon tea. The local school seemed to be right next door to the park with the playground and while were there, the bell rang for the end of school. A group of aboriginal children then arrived at the playground just as we were herding our children back in the car. We said hello and they were very keen for a chat and to drink the rest of the water we had in our big water bottle I was carrying. After Ti-Tree, I did the driving for the remaining 200km to Alice Springs. Michael liked to do the majority of the driving with the caravan on the back, but since this road was almost dead straight most of the time, I said I would give him a break and do some driving. He was still nervous for the first few minutes but eventually seemed to relax back and do some reading on his iPad. It was fairly easy driving and for part of it, we continued to listen to more of ‘The Sugar Creek Gang’. We all enjoyed this (except perhaps Bethy who it was probably a bit old for – but she was happy listening to her stories or videos on her iPad). As we approached Alice Springs, the landscape became a bit more hilly. I didn’t know about AS being surrounded by the McDonnell Ranges and so was quite taken by surprise at the beauty as we drove into the town. It was about 5.30 as we were driving in from the north and so the colours of the mountains and valleys all around were beautiful. It was a good first impression of the place.

We found the caravan park we had rung ahead and booked into – Stuart Caravan Park. Some of the kids would have liked to go to the BIG 4 one, but it was quite a bit more expensive. Yes it had a jumping pillow, but this other one did have a playground and a pool. Because we were arriving at dinner time and there were no more frozen meals, we decided to order pizza tonight. So we got to our van site and set up the basics and made a phone call to order pizza, then Michael went to pick it up (just a 5 min drive to the city area). The girls had a quick shower after dinner and then off to bed. Michael and I looked up a few things we could do the next day and then went to bed also.

It had been about 1200kms of driving over the 2 days. We were ready to stop for a few days again.

We hadn’t expected to stay 3 days/4 nights, but there was enough to see and do, including some down time. Some of the things we did were:

– go to a Christian Outreach Centre Church Sunday morning. We were greeted by several people and made to feel welcome and Hannah and Beth enjoyed going to the children’s church and doing some craft and playing with play-dough.

– have lunch at McDonalds

– drive up to the lookout and get a great view over the city.

– go to Lake Moondarra 15 mins out of Mt Isa, where fishermen catch good barramundi and there is a nice recreation area. We enjoyed watching the birds flying down to try to pick up fish with their claws.

– Michael, Lauren, Sam and Hannah did an underground mine tour at The Hard Times Mine, which is a simulated underground mine. As well as doing tours here, they use it for training apprentices. They had an age limit of 7yrs old for children so Bethany was not allowed to go on the tour (they are down there for 2and a half hours and so I guess they think the younger children might not handle this very well). Bethany and I went grocery shopping while the others were on the tour, then met the others with lunch. They had all found it very interesting. One interesting thing they learned was that Mt Isa is actually the biggest city in the world in surface area, due to a governmental anomaly. What used to be the shire of Mt Isa (extending to Cloncurry in the east and Camooweal in the west, and further north and south) was converted to the city of Mt Isa, but the land area remained the same ( not sure this makes sense – but that’s what the guide said).

– all of us did a tour of the Underground Hospital. This was a mostly unknown part of Mt Isa’s history until fairly recently (I think about 20 yrs ago) when the blade of an end loader which was doing some erosion control work uncovered the entrance to this hospital. It was dug into the side of a hill beside the existing hospital in 1942, after Darwin was bombed by the Japanese. It was believed that the threat of Mt Isa being bombed was a very real one (due to the lead being produced there), so the MIM company made the material available and a group of dedicated miners did the work voluntarily after they finished their shifts. It took 12 weeks to dig, drill and blast out. As history tells, the underground hospital never needed to be used for its intended purpose (thankfully), and in the early 1950s the entrances were covered with earth. It was forgotten and not known about for years. When unearthed, it still had the beds and equipment in there – they have been left there. It was a very interesting glimpse into history.

– Dad and the kids went to a family fun park, including a waterpark, for an hour or so.

– all of us did a surface mine tour into the Mt Isa Mines site. This was a 2 hr tour on a bus, with the guide driving us around the different parts of the site and explaining things. Of all the tour guides we’ve had so far on our tours, he was my least favourite. He was fairly robotic in his presentation of information and he didn’t encourage questions very well, as he would often say “I will get to that later”. I initially asked a few questions, but after his response, I thought it might be better to look it up later myself:). Despite this, I did learn a lot and found it very interesting. It is the only mine in the world which mines for all 4 metals – silver, lead, zinc and copper. The first 3 are mined together in same ore and the initial stages of processing are done together, until they are separated.  The copper is mined in a different ore. There is the underground area which goes down nearly 3km. Only about 2 percent of the employees work underground. There is also the big open cut mine (the black star mine) which digs out much of the ore and there is the vehicle maintenance and machinery maintenance, and there is all the different areas for the processing steps. The main steps  in the processing which I remember are: collecting the ore, crushing the ore (into the size of talcum powder), extracting the metal from the ore by bubbling it through a reactant (this is where an understanding of chemistry is needed) , then putting it through a concentrator, then smelting it to remove impurities. During the extracting process I think is when most of the fumes are released. These need to be cleansed as much as possible (more chemical processes) and then let out the stacks. There are 3 tall stacks at MIM, the tallest one being the lead stack which is 273m high. When it was built in 1975, it was the tallest freestanding structure in the southern hemisphere. It is the structure that dominates the skyline of Mt Isa from many kms away. At the open cut mine, we saw the huge dump trucks driving down to the bottom and then up to the top. Apparently it takes 30 mins for a truck to go one way (up or down). Regarding the trucks, most of them are driven by women and the company actually prefers this because the lifespan of the trucks are longer with women drivers. This is because if a red indicator light comes on in the cab whilst driving, the women get it looked at straight away, whereas the blokes tend to think ‘she’ll be right mate’ and not mention it until knock off time. One more thing I found really interesting was that there is a specific roadway for the road trains that come from the Gordon Fisher Mine 20kms north of the main mine. This is another open cut mine and the road trains carry 500 tonnes of ore each time from the GF mine to the main mine site for processing. Because of how heavy they are, they are not allowed to drive on the main roads, so they have their own roads (I guess built by MIM) to travel the 20km.

– we visited the  2 museums at the Isa Experience Centre. One of these gave an overview of the history of Mt Isa – I found this fascinating. I had no idea about how Mt Isa had come about up until then. It is quite a young town in comparison to most others around it – 1923. Founded by John Campbell Miles, a prospector passing through the area on his way to NT – and came across rock which looked interesting to his geology-trained eyes. He sent some to Cloncurry for analysis and it was found to have an amazingly high content of lead and zinc. It was a year later that MIM was established – the town that followed grew from this company. The 2nd museum was the Riversleigh Fossil Museum, which explained about the Riversleigh area north of Mt Isa where many significant fossils have been found. I found this less interesting, but the kids found some interest in it.

As I had said, the caravan park we stayed at in Mt Isa was quite laid back, and quite cheap for our family. The down side was that the facilities were quite basic and there was red dirt everywhere rather than grass – needed more care to keep everything clean. There was a pool there, but it was quite cold. Hannah and Beth had a swim twice, but only lasted about 5-10 mins each time. The other thing about it was it seemed to be made up of quite a bit of permanent accommodation – more so than the temporary accomodation. We think it was probably a lot of people who came to work at the mines for a limited time, and only wanted cheap lodgings.

All in all, I found our time at Mt Isa had both good and bad aspects. Good for all the interesting things I learnt there. Bad for the dust and dirt and lack of shade. It must have been a harsh environment for the pioneers in summer especially!

It was fairly cold when we woke up this morning. We tried to put the heater on but it wouldn’t work – it was hard to believe it would have been less than 4degrees but it either was that, or the temperature the heater failed to work at was greater than what the instructions said. Eventually by about 8am, the heater started to work, and 15mins later everyone felt comfortably warm. After making lunches and morning/afternoon tea for a day of driving, we got away about 9.30.

At Richmond there was another museum showcasing lots of fossils – we decided not to go to it because it was probably similar to the on at Hughenden. If it hadn’t been so cold and windy, we might have done the 1.2 km walk around Lake Fred Titon near the van park, but it wouldn’t have been pleasant in the wind. So that just left one other thing we had planned to do in Richmond – that was to go fossicking for fossils at the quarry about 12km out of town – a free activity. The van park office had a display of some of the sorts of fossils that had been uncovered at that site, so we had a look at that to be informed about the sorts of things to look for in the rocks. We drove out to the site and were the only ones there at the time. The council or whoever must have occasionally put a ripper through the ground as there were areas where broken up rocks were exposed in the ground and you didn’t really have to dig – just turn over rocks. Also it was sandstone so very brittle and easy to break if wanting to do so. We hadn’t known what to expect, but it was actually very easy to find all kinds of fossils in the rocks – mostly shells from what we could tell. There had obviously been millions of shells in the lake area which then became sandstone. We all found our own fossiled shell – several in fact. Bethany actually found quite an usual one and was very proud of this. Lauren also found a bone which looked quite different to the kangaroo bones we often find around our property at Little Burra – not sure how old it is, but we added it to our collection. We were there for about 45mins and it was a bit of a novelty and good that it was so easy to find interesting stuff.

We then headed back on to the Flinders Hwy to continue west. We planned to stop at Cloncurry today and then continue on to Mt Isa for the evening.

The landscape from Richmond to Cloncurry was quite distinct – mainly grass with quite small trees dotted around the place – and mostly flat, with an occasional mountain in the distance rising out of the landscape. It was 144km to Julia Creek where we had lunch parked by the creek. Then it was another 137km to Cloncurry. We arrived at Cloncurry at about 2.30 and drove to the John Flynn Museum – which chronicled the foundation of the RFDS. Unfortunately we were there on a Saturday and the museum closed at 3pm on a Saturday. It was not going to be worth paying to go in for just 20mins or so. Michael had been the main person keen to see it, so it was unfortunate for him. There was not much else to interest us in Cloncurry, so we continued on towards Mt Isa.

The landscape between Cloncurry and Mt Isa was a bit different to earlier in the day. It was still grass and sparse trees but there were more rolling hills. About half an hour out of Mt Isa was a monument to Burke and Wills who had passed through that way on their ill fated journey to the Gulf. We also drove past the entrance to Mary Kathleen which used to be a mining town a couple of decades ago. It is now just a few remaining bitumen roads. We didnt have enough coverage on our phone to ring any caravan parks until we were just about in Mt Isa (probably because of the hills). The first van park we came to indicated full for powered sites, so I rang another van park on the north side of the city and it had vacancies and was only $32 per night as it didn’t charge any extra for kids – a good deal. We drove there and set up. It was a very laid back van park. We were there at 5.30 and the office closed at 5.00, but there was a phone outside the office which went through to the owners – they said to just find a site that we liked and we could fix them up in the morning. So we did this. 

With tomorrow being Sunday, we decided we would find a church to go to as we hadn’t been since we left Canberra. We decided we would go to church in the morning then relax in the afternoon and see a few quick sites around town. Then we would look into doing some mine tours the following day or two.

We got going a bit slowly today. Finally about 10am, we had the van all packed up and were ready to go and do some more of the tour. We left the van at the van park and went and saw the rest of the sights, which included:
– a restored poppet head ( which was the wooden structure built above each mine shaft).
– the venus gold battery – another building and equipment used in the mining process.
– some more pioneer churches and buildings.
We felt it had been a good way to get to know quite a bit about the history and the layout of the town and we would be keen to do it again at any other towns that had it.

We went back and connected to our van and then started the drive west along the Flinders Hwy. We were aiming to do nearly 400 km to get to Richmond. The first leg of driving was 244km to Hughenden. Along the way were quite a few little townships such as Balfe’s Creek, Homestead, Pentland, Torrens Creek and Prairie. We didn’t stop at any of these as we were a bit limited for time. 

We did stop at Hughenden for about an hour. We went into the Flinders Discovery Centre which housed a cast iron replica of the skeleton of Muttaburrasaurus, whose skeleton bones were found at nearby Muttaburra. It also showcased a lot of the fossils found in this area – particularly marine fossils, as this area was thought to be covered by a huge inland lake many years ago. There was a kids discovery area with puzzles, dinosaur dressups, and a fossil touch table which Hannah and Beth enjoyed. After this little museum, we drove past the full-bodied replica of Muttaburrasaurus on the median strip outside the local hotel. We then drove about 2 mins out of town to the historic Coolabah Tree. This tree was blazed ( a process of cutting a strip out of the trunk of the tree to form a permanent scar) by 2 different search parties who were looking for the ill fated Burke and Wills expedition team. It is preserved as a memorial to the courage shown by the early explorers of our country.

I had phoned through to the Richmond caravan park as we were entering into the 3G network at Hughenden (just to make sure we there was a spot for us if we kept going). When I said we were coming from Hughenden, she said to take it easy on the road as the stretch between Hughenden and Richmond had lots of dips. I didn’t think much of this comment at the time, but when we did start driving towards Richmond, I realised she had been spot on – the road had more dips and sudden humps than we had come across before. At one point Michael didn’t see one coming and we think we almost got airborne on that one! Anyway, it was about an hour and a half drive. We got there at about 5.45, later than we had been getting to van parks. When we got out of the car, we noticed how much the temperature had changed – we all reached for our jumpers. There was quite a wind and it was quite chilly. We set up quickly and then defrosted the last of the frozen meals I had cooked back in Canberra. They had been very useful. We all rugged up a bit more for bed that night.

Well as it turned out we ended up staying at the van park during the morning and going out in the afternoon. There was an issue with one of the children that needed sorting out and we decided it was best to take the time to do that properly. Then we thought it best for the kids to have some ‘down time’ at the van park while I caught up on the washing that needed to be done. We seemed to be averaging about a week between washing loads – and then there was at least 2 loads to do. So Michael supervised the kids on the jumping pillow and then swimming pool, while I caught up on housekeeping. (Michael didn’t mind supervising as the kids were old enough that he could read a book or his iPad most of the time and just keep an ear out and look up every now and then). I didn’t mind doing the housekeeping as it meant some time on my own, which I needed every now and then.

The kids really enjoyed their morning of play and swimming and were very hungry by lunchtime. I’d preempted this and prepared a big lunch with cold meats, salad and bread. We discussed the things we were going to see that afternoon.

Our first stop was the information centre in town because I’d read where you can hire a CD audio tour of the town for $5. We got the CD and it also came with a laminated map to show you all the points of interest you’ll be visiting. I also wanted to ask which school used to be the old Mount Carmel Christian Brothers School which is where Dad attended for a while. I found out it is now the Columba Catholic School inner campus, right near the centre of town and it is still a boarding school as well as day school. Having done these things, we went into the next room and watched a short video on the history of Charters Towers – how it was an accidental find of alluvial gold by an aboriginal boy (named Jupiter) which started the gold rush in the area. Jupiter had been a helper in a white person party of prospectors who had been moving through that area. This event happened in 18? and by the late 1800s Charters Towers was the 2nd largest city in QLD, and had given itself the nickname of ‘the World’ as it was thought that anything a person could ever want was found there. There was a lot of opulent buildings and residences built there by those businessmen and entrepreneurs who became wealthy on the gold. By 1930, most of the gold had been found and the town’s population decreased dramatically.

Next door to the information centre was the old stock exchange arcade. We heard a talk about the ‘calling of the cards’ which occurred 3 times a day during the gold rush period. There was also a miners museum and assay room nearby which was free and had just a few tools and things from the mining days.

We hopped back in the car, put on the CD and started following the tour. It first took us towards Towers Hill, just a few kms from the town centre. At he base of the hill was the monument to Jupiter, the boy who first discovered gold. Near this was a seismological building, as Charters Towers is one of a handful of towns/cities in Australia which collects data on earth tremors etc. As you drive up the hill you can see many of the WW2 bunkers which were used for storing reserve ammunition for the squadron at Townsville. Up the top of the hill was a good view over the town at the lookout. There was an amphitheater up there as they put on a sound and light show at night about the history – called ‘Ghosts of Gold’ – needed tickets and we weren’t overly interested in this. There was a short walk to the ruins of a pyrite tower which had been used for getting the gold out of the quartz using a chlorination process. It had been built on the hill as the gold quartz had had to run downhill during the process.

We followed the next couple of places on the tour which were pioneer residences which had been maintained or restored. We drove past the Charters Towers hospital which had been built in around 1890. I figured my grandmother, Nanny, must have been born at that hospital because she was born in 1902. I also found the street, Farrelly Street, where her family had lived for the first 6 yrs of her life before they moved to Brisbane. 

We then went past the Columba Catholic School inner campus and found the older section which would have been where my Dad  boarded. It was just diagonally opposite the hospital. This part of the school had a wrought iron archway with St  Mary’s School embedded in the archway. I think mum had told me this was what the school was called after it amalgamated with Mt Carmel. I took some photos – perhaps they will bring back some memories for Dad.

We were about halfway through the self drive tour at that stage and it was about 4.15. We had seen a shop advertised in a tourist brochure that we were interested in looking at. It was a toy shop which sold olden days toys. We thought we had better go there next in case it closed at 5pm. It wasn’t far from where we were so we drove there and went in. It had the types of toys that I hadn’t seen in a long time, some which I remember having as a child – like a spinning top. The kids all enjoyed looking at everything. The lady who owned the shop