Charters Towers. The old Ambulance Station built in 1900 is now a museum. : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Charters Towers. The old Ambulance Station built in 1900 is now a museum. / denisbin
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-改変禁止 2.1 |
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| 説明 | The Mossman River in Nth QLD was named by explorer Dalrymple in 1873 after Hugh Mosman. Note the spelling change! He was a white cattle station man whose Aboriginal servant Jupiter Mosman discovered gold at Charters Towers in late 1871. Jupiter Mosman, Hugh Mosman (his father started Mosman farm in Sydney), James Fraser and George Clarke registered the first find. Jupiter Mosman discovered a nugget of gold on Towers Hill. The mining site and town was named after the QLD Gold Commissioner Mr W. Charters. Jupiter Mosman died in 1945. His employer Hugh Mosman fared well from gold and left a big legacy to his descendants. The main street of Charters Towers is called Mosman Street. Jupiter was born in 1861. In the late 1860s he was taken to Hugh Mosman’s station in the west. He took on Hugh Mosman’s surname and worked as his servant. Jupiter was sent to school and christened a Catholic with the of name Jupiter. Hugh Mosman and his white companions made a fortune from gold mining in Charters Towers. Hugh’s company was the North Australian Mine and later he added the Victoria Gold Mining Company. He also owned the Rise and Shine ore crushing mill. When Hugh Mosman left Charters Towers in 1891 Jupiter went too and worked for Hugh’s brother Archie droving cattle. A large boomerang shaped monument was erected in 1997 to the memory of Jupiter Mosman in Lissner Park with its picturesque rotunda. Before his death locals petitioned the Queensland government to allow Jupiter Mosman to be cared for in a local nursing home because Aboriginals were not allowed to be cared for with white Queenslanders at that time. Archie Mosman, the brother of Hugh Mosman inherited much of the fortune that Hugh had amassed from gold at Charters Towers. Hugh never married. Archie had children with an Aboriginal woman. In Hugh Mosman’s will valued at £70,000 in 1909, Archie was left a life time’s right to a sixth of Hugh’s estate. It was not until 1977 that Archie’s Aboriginal descendants were granted their entitlement to their white father’s estate by a Queensland Court! Unfairly Jupiter received nothing from Hugh Mosman’s will. A gold rush to Charters Towers began in 1872 and was extended by the discovery of the Day Dawn reef in 1879 and the Brilliant reef in 1889. The arrival of the railway from Townsville in 1882 helped bring investors and capital to the gold mining companies of Charters Towers. In the 1870s Charters Towers had a population of about 30,000 people and was the largest city outside of Brisbane. So much money flowed through the town that it was colloquially called “The World”. In 1886 miners took the city to the world - at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London. They set up a display of mining and ore crushing and they accepted £1 shares in various mining companies that operated in the town. It was a great success. One company is an example- Day Dawn Block and Wyndham- they received almost £500,000 in paid up shares to finance their future mining work! This exhibition put Charters Towers on the world map and was the first time London investors invested directly in Australian mines rather than through a London based share broking company or finance company. Some of the companies were duds but most were not. Charters Towers Stock Exchange gave British investors the chance to invest directly in the gold mines. The boom of the 1880s built offices, shops and the Stock Exchange. Between 1891 and 1896 the gold mines at Charters Towers were the most productive mine in the Australian colonies .But in 1896 many miners rode off to WA goldfields in search of more gold and the town stumbled in its growth. But a peak year for Charters Towers was 1899 when it got one third of all its gold from cyaniding the discarded dumps. Although mining by companies ceased in 1917 a few miners worked the old mines and overburden dumps during the Great Depression. The first Post Office opened in 1871 and Charters Towers became a municipality in 1877 with its first mayor. The historic Venus Battery to crush and extract gold was established in 1872 and operated until 1971 when it became a museum which is now closed. Gold mining ceased in 1917 but the city survived and thrived. Its population dropped from 22,000 in 1901 to less than 6,000 in 1921. Between 1871 and 1917 over 200 tonnes of gold was extracted from Towers Hill. The gold ore was especially rich and produced 50% more gold from its ores than what the Victorians got from their ores and 75% more than what the Western Australian goldfields of the 19th century got from their ores. Charters Towers today has around 30 heritage listed buildings and it has a thriving tourism industry and beef industry and around 8,000 inhabitants. Since 2006 Citigold Company has recommenced gold mining outside of the town. |
| 撮影日 | 2024-06-28 13:53:05 |
| 撮影者 | denisbin |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | |
| カメラ | DSC-HX90V , SONY |
| 露出 | 0.001 sec (1/800) |
| 開放F値 | f/4.0 |