We continued along the Flinders Highway to Charters Towers and stopped in town to go to the Information Centre. There we spoke to a lovely girl who told us some of the history of Charters Towers and invited us to watch a short documentry on the town. We then turned off onto the Gregory Development road and drove for 42km to the Fletcher Creek Rest Area. This is a free camp with lots of room three sides of the creek, with toilets and cold showers on one side of the creek only. The creek was very clear and fast flowing with a foot bridge over it for campers on the other side to access the toilets. The water in the creek surprised us as all the creeks we had crossed on the way had very little or no water in them. There was a National Park called Dalrymple about 2.5km in from the campsite along the Burdekin River and there is a cairn there with a tree stump with Leichhardt's blaze on it, this is where Leichhardt and his exploration party camped on their 1845 expedition. This spot was so good we decided to stay for 6 days (you are able to stay here for one month).
We drove into town the following day to have a good look around and do some shopping. The town is very interesting as all the shopfronts along the main streets are heritage listed and not able to be changed, therefore it has a wonderful old world charm.
The shops like Target have preserved the facade and built their shop windows behind which was very interesting. There was also the Stock Exchange arcade where you could see the shopfronts of the old stock brokerage firms along the arcade and could well imagine what it would have been like in the past. Another day we drove to town and went up to the town lookout which was interesting as it had a lot of history on big billboards depicting the old gold processing procedures and stories of characters of that era. There was a large rotunda there that looked like it was used for recitals and the view of the town was very good. Charters Towers is a large town with all the facilities and lovely large parks and we enjoyed our stay there very much.
Fletcher Creek under the road bridge
Fletcher Creek in the other direction
Our campsite
Leichhardt's cairn
Main street Charters Towers
One of the old buildings in Charters Towers
A view from Towers Hill Lookout
One of the billboards at Towers Hill Lookout
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