Doing More with the Less Known

Interesting that old gold mining equipment can be a historically significant attraction.  At some sites sign posts are constructed describing what the equipment did.  The area around it maintained, with arrows pointing where further pieces of historically significant litter can be located.  Litter, at the time it was left there, that’s what it was.  Equipment discarded as the viable gold disappeared along with the miners and sometimes the communities the gold supported.  Will the CSG wells dotting our rural landscape be future historical attractions?  Or has mining lost the perceived charm of yesteryear.  A charm that could see fortunes made, lost, robbed or killed for.

Mount Britton, 65km west of Sarina and Ravenswood, an hour drive east of Charters Towers are hardly up there with Dream or Sea World as tourist attractions. Each however adds to the visitor’s perceived charm of the gold mining in the late 1800’s.  Mount Britton; population 0, buildings 3 (shed, lookout shelter and toilet); hardly the infrastructure is the attraction, but the stories and pictures of the school, picture studio, doctors surgery and the pubs scattered across the site that once was home to 1500 inhabitants is a shiny lure for the more adventure seeking tourist. At Ravenswood the infrastructure is the initial attraction.  The township is listed by the National Trust.  Two beautiful hotels remain out of the 48 that once quenched 5000 throats.  Chimney stacks, mullock heaps, the school swimming pool are brilliant camera fodder, however it is the stories on the signposts beside them that engages the visitor, keeping some a few days in the free campground at the showgrounds, or bedding with the ghosts at the hotels.  Could more be done with the old gold fields around Rockhampton; Canoona, Bouldercombe, Morinish, Rosewood, Ridgelands, Mt. Chalmers and of course Mount Morgan to attract the more adventure seeking tourist.  Drive along the western highways and you’ll see them towing a camper trailer or 4WD caravan.  The Cape, Uluru, Winton’s dinosaurs footprints, Undara Lava Tubes are typical destinations.  For these tourists it’s the journey that’s just as important.  To see, experience different things, and engage with the stories and characters.  Maybe as we wait for Great Keppel Island to once again become a major tourist attraction, we should do more with less, our less known sites of interest.