Charters Towers
Electorate created by the 1887 Electoral Districts Act as a two member constituency. It became a single member seat under the 1910 Act and was abolished in the 1959 redistribution, with the town of Charters Towers being included in Flinders. The 1991 redistribution brought it back, encompassing most of the former Flinders and Peak Downs electorates. Merged with Tablelands to form the seat of Dalrymple in 2008.
Regional Council formed in 2008 by the amalgamation of Charters Towers City and the surrounding Dalrymple Shire..
Rural city founded on gold mining south-west of Townsville. The gold rush of the 1870s saw the town become a major mining and business centre with a presence that had Northeners dub it 'The World'. The rush followed earlier rushes to the Cape River, where William Charters was appointed goldfields commissioner in 1867. The following year gold was found north-east at Ravenswood. Gold was also found at Broughton in 1871. In January 1872 Jupiter Mosman, stumbled on gold near Towers Hill. Jupiter was the Aboriginal servant of Hugh Mosman, son of Archibald Mosman of Mosman's Bay, Sydney, Hugh named the gold find Charters Tors, after the goldfields commissioner and the likeness of the rocky outcrops to the granite tors in south England. Gold was also found on the Millchester Creek, known as Lower Camp, but as leads petered out they returned to Upper (Towers) camp. By 1890, Charters Towers was the second largest centre in Queensland, boasting its own stock exchange in Mosman Street.
Chillagoe
Electorate created by the 1911 redistribution, with voters largely drawn from the former electorate of Woothakata. based on Atherton Tablelands. The 1931 redistribution saw it relabelled as The Tableland.
Former mining town west of Cairns named by William Atherton in 1888, taking the name from the refrain of a sea shanty. James Venture Mulligan had explored the area in 1873 and Atherton backed up his reports of rich copper outcrops in the area. Mining pioneer John Moffat sent prospectors to the field in 1888 and quickly came to monopolise a fieldthat extended 15 km west to Mungana and 10 km east to Calcifer, where Moffat established a mine and smelters in 1884. He had a similar operation at Muldiva, 25 km south-east of Chillagoe, but closed it down in 1893. There were plans for a railway line from Chillagoe to Mareeba, connecting with the Cairns line, and an electrolytic smelter at the Barron Falls,but the smelter proposal was defeated in Parliament. Smelters at Chillagoe were an expensive alternative, given the cost for transporting coal inland but began operations in September 1901. The venture seemed to be profitable, and several directors of Chillagoe Pty Ltd offloaded their shares in a bullish market, knowing the venture was ultimately doomed. The smelters were closed in December 1901.
In a bid to overcome the shortage of ore reserves around Chillagoe, a private railway from the Chillagoe line south to the Etheridge copper and gold deposits opened in 1909. The Chillagoe smelters were reactivated, but flooding and fire damage closed operations in 1914. Despite good wartime metal prices fluctuating fortunes and closures persisted and the Queensland government acquired the smelters In 1919, a move which brought allegations of political corruption which persisted for many years. Queensland Treasurer, Ted Theodore, and Premier, William McCormack, had been union organisers at the Mungana field and were entrapped in allegations about their financial dealings in the late 1920s in Mungana,. Closures plagued the smelter in the late 1920s, and when the Australian Labor Party lost power in 1929, the new government ordered a Royal Commission which destroyed the political careers of Theodore and McCormack.
The population varied over the years, reaching a peak of about 10,000 in 1917, with 13 hotels, two newspapers and a hospital. Subsidised railway freight rates transported ore to the Chillagoe smelters, but lack of manpower during wartime and competition from Mount Isa forced their closure. Between 1901 and 1943, the smelter complex produced 60,000 tonnes of copper, 50,000 tonnes of lead, 6.5 million ounces of silver and 175,000 ounces of gold.
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