SOUVENIR-CHARTERS TOWERS, 1872 TO JULY, 1950

subsequently at the Seventy Mile. Others soon followed in the wake of the two Joes.
  The reefs as they were developed proved to be of a permanent character, and the owners of machinery at Ravenswood decided to place their plants on the Towers. The first to bring his machinery was W. H. Buchanan. He elected it on the site at Millchester where the Brilliant and, St. George mill was afterwards. John Deane soon followed with the Defiance mill, which he erected in the centre of dense scrub. E. H. T. Plant erected the Venus mill, which was an entirely new plant. The Tough Bros. put up the One and All mill, and others followed. The Fair Rosamond was built in 1876 by St. Andrew Ward. These mills were all situated    on     Millchester    Creek    (now known as Gladstone Creek).
  James Smith Read, proprietor of the "Ravenswood. Miner" newspaper, was so impressed with the prospects of the field that he bought the plant of the "Gladstone Observer" and brought it to the Towers. The first issue was published on 2nd June, 1872, under the name of "The Charters Towers Miner" and afterwards it changed to the name of the "Northern Miner," in order that some newspaper should be identified with the interests of the whole of North Queensland. The office was a building erected, between the Royal Hotel and Joe Leech's bark humpy.
Before the advent of shire and municipal councils the roads were made and repaired by Government road parties and the men employed on this work were paid by cheque payable only in Brisbane. The banks charged exchange if the men wanted them cashed, until a branch of the Queensland National Bank was opened. Postal facilities were very primitive. Cobb and Co. ran the mail coach, which ran right through from Townsville to Hughenden, and a man of the name of Tom Coyle was the driver. Magazines and newspapers came by dray.
   The first stone was carted and crushed at the Broughton, but there were no records kept in the Commissioner's Office, so the only means of
knowing approximately the quantity of gold produced by the first crushings from the field was by the amount taken by the gold escort, for some of the claim holders took trips to Sydney and Melbourne with their gold and so cleared their expenses of the trip. The first escort took over 29,000 ounces of gold away and the second 31,000 ounces.
  It may give some idea of the number of reefs or shows that were taken up on the field, as there were 509 protection areas granted from September 1872, to July 1873, but no register was kept of those granted previously.
The first School of Arts on the field was at Millchester but was destroyed by fire. The first School of Arts on the Towers was in the building now occupied by the Miners Accident Association in Mosman 'Street. The first hospital was on the land now occupied by the P.M.G.
Department at the corner of Mary and Mosman Streets. It was built of iron bark saplings and a bark roof.
In the North Australian, when Mosman and his mates took it up and worked it, they found huge lumps of gold in the outcrop of the reef. Other mines worked early were: Block and Whyndham, Rainbow, Queen Mines and the St. Patrick block.
This latter mine was taken up by a Mr. Stubley and, it returned him £1000 a week for a long period, and was the talk of Queensland at the time. About the Day Dawn P.C. was discovered.
  It was worked by five Germans who had immigrated to the country (Pfeiffer, Reidrick, and others) who started on a buck reef, but persevered and eventually bottomed on a rich reef. Both the P .C. as it was known and the Block and Wyndham raised £1,750,000 worth of gold. The Brilliant mine then came into being and the shaft was sunk to about 1400 feet, but got nothing. The bank was about to close on. the owners (R. Craven and Party), so they decided to come up the shaft to a formation which they had passed through and drove in a level a few feet and struck the reef,