Page 6 SOUVENIR-CHARTERS TOWERS, 1872 to JULY,
1950
Hodgkinson and Mulgrave £158,537, Etheridge and Woolgar
£198,759, Gympie £698,480, Cloncurry £123,595.
Charters Towers figure for this period was over one million pounds
sterling or £400,000 above the production of Gympie which field
had the second highest figure for this period.
The Charters Towers field produced £400,000 worth of gold in the
year 1888 which was about four times the rate of the previous ten
years. An interesting feature of this period was that the Towers with a
mining population of
2100 men produced 151,600 ounces of gold in the year 1887, value per
ounce £3/6/or £250 per miner for that year-Gympie with
1450 miners produced 96,939 ounces value £3/10/- per ounce total
value £339,286 which was equal to £233 per man.
The Croydon field in 1887, with approximately 2,000 miners,
produced 31,789 ounces value £2/13/6 per ounce equal to £35
per man.
The value of Gympie Gold averaged £3/10/-, slightly higher than
Towers gold £3/6/- whereas Mt. Morgan's gold averaged
£4/2/- and Gladstone £4/3/per ounce respectively.
On the Palmer field, (where most of the mining population was Chinese)
the value of gold averaged £3/17/- per ounce. This field produced
6,981 ounces of gold in the year 1887.
In the year 1886 a total of 1905 miners rights were issued to Towers
miners and in 1887 the total was 2261. In the same two years miners
rights issued at Gympie totalled 1507 and 1562 respectively.
The annual gold production from all Queensland sources in 1886 was
£349,990 and in 1887 £425,923; an increase of £84,933
being shown in 1887. The total gold yield, for 1888 for Queensland was
454,953 ounces or 30,000 ounces more than 1887, and it must be said
that the most productive goldfield was Charters Towers, which paid
better wages to the miners and bigger dividends to the public.
Old Court House - situated where the old Town Hall building stands in
Gill Street. The tower in the background could possibly be the Fire
Alarm Bell as the Fire Brigade Building is still in that position.
