Charters Towers

on the road!

Awhile back Emily and I decided it would be fun to road trip out to Charters Towers  (about 130km from Townsville) for the drive in theater.  We opted for this weekend because Toy Story 3 was on. :)  So by 8:00am-ish we were on our merry way to inland Queensland.  It was a beautiful, sunny day and we were ready for an adventure.  We really had no plan besides the drive in, so we were just going to wing it.  

The drive out only took about an hour and half and seemed quite quick with some good jams and interesting sights.  There was one stretch of land that was absolutely covered in termite mounds!  It was the strangest thing I have ever seen, they look like mini volcanos haha.  Strange.  We also saw sooo much roadkill :(  But thats what happend on these outbackish roads.  We even saw a road train (which is a huge culprit in the road kill because they cannot slow down) which is essentiall 2-5 semi trucks hooked together.

termite mounds!

Road train!

We arrived in town to find quite a large city, which surprised me.  Back in the day it was the second largest city in QLD (besides Brisbane) due to the gold rush, so it makes sense....I am just so used to podunk Australian towns.  We got some coffee and walked up the main street to have a look at the shops.  The main street reminded me a bit of a CO ski town where there are some fun unique boutiques as well as some western shops (since it is the country music city of Australia).  After that we went to the tourist center to get some ideas for the day. We ended up getting an audio driving tour CD that directed us all around town and informed us of the historic sights and landmarks of the town.  It was actually a lot cooler than it sounds haha. 

View from Tower Hill.  Looks like a decent sized town, but there is NOTHING beyond the city limits.

Hanging with the boomerang sculpture.

Kissing a camel, no biggie. :)

 In the middle of the cd we took a detour 30kms west to eat lunch at a pub that supposedly had an animal farm....mainly because we wanted to see a camel and an ostrich.  We drove out there only to find out the pub was closed (bugger!) but the camel and ostrich were still out back, so we still got the see them. :)   We headed back to the main street and had lunch, then finished our driving tour.  Once we had finished that we ran to the grocery store to pick up something to eat for later (we opted for PB&J since we're both suffering peanut withdrawls living with a Lindsay) and some deeeelicious jaffas (one of my favorite lollies here in oz).  After we stocked up on some treats we were off to the river for a potential swim.  We drove out to some site 20kms outside of the city but it was juuust a little too chilly for us, so we relaxed on the bank of the river for a bit before heading to the movie.  As we were leaving to head to the drive in we caught a glimpse of the most amazing sunset!  So bummed that we didnt leave a little earlier and catch the whole things, but oh well...next time.  Since Charters Towers is in the middle of nowhere there are just miles and miles of nothing, which makes the sunsets absolutely amazing.  That is one reason I am dying to go to Uluru; the sunsets and starry night is meant to be unbelievable.  So after snapping a few photos we were off the drive in to chow down and enjoy some g-rated entertainment.  I love the toy story series so I of course loved the third movie.  I even cried at the end, as pathetic as that sounds haha.

Relaxing on the river bank.

tail end of a gorgeous sunset