A little rain during the night but when I woke up it had gone and the clouds were quite thin. Again, after breakfast I set off on a ride around the town.
I was searching for and found the original home of the Honourable E.H. T. Plant who founded the Venus Gold Battery that I visited earlier. It is now within the grounds of the Blackheath and Thornburgh College, which is just one of a large number of public and private schools in the town. The former home is now the Administration building for the school. It is without a doubt the most prestigious building in the town.
I spent about an hour on the bike criss-crossing the town just to ensure that I have not missed too much. There are many versions of homes in the town from the one above to a simple miner’s cottage. I noticed one fairly plain cottage that probably has the best garden in the town. I could not find it again to take a photo.
After I had a shower I went and chatted with fellow Kimberley Karavan owners, Mike and Debra from Sydney. They had come in last night and Mike did come over have a chat last night for a short time. They were returning from the Kimberley Karavan Owners Group national gathering at Adele’s Grove in far western Queensland, where Debra and I have been appointed to the committee of the Owners Group. I had met them at Lake Tinaroo at the gathering there in late July.
Later in the morning, I went into the CBD. Priority one was to have a muggacino at a cafe I had been to yesterday. It was not too bad but I have had better. I read the newspaper while there. Following that I went to Woolworths to get some non food items to do some jobs around the vehicles. I returned to the Bravo and left the items there and then into the second hand book shop where I bought a Dale Brown book I had not read for $7.00.
Then it was to the Charters Towers Folk Museum. It is another valuable display of items from the past that has been divided into logical sections, e.g., shop, music and home entertainment, machinery, military and mining. There are a number of sub sections. One thing that attracted me was the old method of getting change after purchasing an item in a shop. This is where the staff member placed the docket and money in a special container and it was propelled along a wire to the change office then returned the same way. Another item was an old reaper and binder. A Lister cream separator was among other similar items. The military area had a wonderful array of medals awarded and their description. Numerous items such as parts of aircraft were there as well as uniforms.
This is another example of a museum run by volunteers. It was formerly owned by the National Trust but they wanted to close it due to lack of numbers. So the locals decided they wanted to keep it. The building reputedly has a ghost of the former owner , Zara Clark,who was deeply in love with her miner brother in law. When he died she was so distraught that she took an amount of strychnine and eventually she died from it.
The rest of the day was taken up with doing the odd jobs and chatting with other travellers.
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