Chilling At Charters

We left Home Hill and travelled north over the Burdekin River on the Burdekin Bridge which is 1.1 km long. This bridge is longer than the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Storey Bridge in Brisbane.  The day before, we rode over this bridge and parked our scooters underneath the bridge.  We then walked up some stairs onto a footway on the bridge.  I saw some huge fish in the water which a local man told us were barramundi.

At Townsville we went shopping and then headed west. At Townville we saw thousands of magpie geese in a cut sugarcane field.  Further west we saw hundreds of termite mounds everywhere.  We also saw lots of native bee hives and a red tailed black cockatoo flew beside our motorhome as we drove along.

On our way to Charters Towers we stopped at the flood marker sign on the Burdekin River at the Macrossan Bridge.  My jaw fell because of how high the river has flooded.

We are now camped at Charters Towers where I saw my first road trains including a petrol road train and I made a new friend.

 Yesterday at Charters Towers we went to a little park where I saw the Columbia Poppet Head.  A poppet head is a structure which sits over a mine shaft and is used to winch ore laden carts from below to the tracks above.

 After lunch we went on a tour at the Venus Gold Battery where rock from the mine was crushed to extract the gold.  I liked the hologram show where Mr Platt, the owner of the battery, told the story of how the gold was extracted from the rock.  It was very interesting.

Stampers to crush the rock

In the afternoon we rode our scooters around the town of Charters Towers and looked at all the old buildings.  That’s all for now folks.

Sayonara