Photos from the Real AUSTRALIA

Flinders Highway: Charters Towers to Camooweal, Queensland

The Flinders Highway is the long, long road that crosses Queensland from east to west, from Townsville on the Pacific coast to the border with the Northern Territory at Camooweal, a small village with a Road House. It passes a number of small outback towns with their typical wooden "Queenslander" homes, built for the climate with large breezy verandas. Coming from Townsville, the first stop is Charters Towers, 133 km to the south west; now the centre of cattle farming and fruit growing, this was a gold rush town with a population of 30 000 in 1890. Much of its elegant architecture remains. 243 km further on, in the heart of sheep and cattle country, is Hughenden, the administrative centre of Flinders shire. Richmond, 112 km further west, was established in 1860 and was briefly a gold rush town; it is a pastoral centre now, as is Julia Creek, 147 km further west again. Now a busy cattle trucking centre, pastoralists came into this area as far back as 1862, only one year after the famous explorers Burke and Wills had passed through here.

Cloncurry is 139 km west of Julia Creek. Rich copper deposits were discovered here in 1867 and Cloncurry was a mining town until it declined in the early twenties. The first regular Qantas flights started between here and Charleville in 1922 and Royal Flying Doctor service started here in 1928. It is nowadays an important road and rail junction. The mining town of Mary Kathleen, 60 km west and now completely dismantled, lives on in an exposition in Cloncurry.

Mount Isa, 117 km west of Cloncurry, is as far as area is concerned, considered Australia largest town (although most of it is empty bush). Silver, lead and copper deposits were discovered here in 1923. The Mount Isa Mines Company dominated mining here two years later and developed the town. In 1929 the railway to Townsville was completed. In 1942 the mining of copper was begun. There is now a major mineral processing plant here apart from the mine, that can be visited. Visitors may go deep down with a pick-up truck in the large elevator and driven around in the huge tunnels underground. The original people in the area, the Kalkadunga (Kalkadoon), resisted fiercely the encroachment of the whites late 19th century.

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