140 km west of Townsville on the Flinders Highway. One day in 1871 an Aborigine boy called Jupiter Mosman noticed a glint beneath the water in a nearby creek. Gold. By the end of the decade 30,000 prospectors were burrowing in the ground around Charters Towers. In those days, the town had no name, and was simply known to the locals as The World. The hunt for gold may focus the mind, but it also narrows it somewhat. Eventually, Charters Towers received a name, and they even called its main street after the person who has started it all. Today Mosman Street and central Charters Towers have many reminders of the old days, with several fine colonial buildings, including the Stock Exchange, the School of Mines, the City Hall and the Courthouse. The gold lasted until the early years of this century, by which time Charters Towers had established itself as the beef-trading centre it remains to this day.

In the 1980s there was a revival in the gold industry, when new mining methods rendered some of the old seams economical. But alas, the days when Mosman Street had 25 pubs and as many bordellos show no signs of returning.

If you fancy seeing how much trouble it took to get even a flake of gold in the old days, head for the Venus Gold Battery (see www.charterstowers.qld.gov.au for details of opening times and tours). This is just half a dozen km east of town. Here you can see a weird and wonderful processing plant, full of defunct machinery, operated for more than a hundred years. Apparently, there are now plans to restore this monster to its former glory.