Charters Towers School of Mines
Charters Towers School of Mines is a heritage-listed school of mines at 24 - 26 Hodgkinson Street, Charters Towers City, Charters Towers, Charters Towers Region, Queensland, Australia. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992. History The School of Mines was established in 1899 by the local Mining Institute, through public subscription, on one of the most important mineral fields in Australia. A timber structure on a government reserve, it was taken over and expanded by the Queensland Government in 1900 into a highly regarded technical institution. Charters Towers was established as a gold field in 1872. The gold was not alluvial, but in the form of downward sloping reefs of gold bearing ore. As time went on it became necessary to dig deeper and deeper shafts to extract the gold which required the formation of companies to provide sufficient capital. The mid 1880s saw a major boom in speculation on mining shares following the display of Charters Towers gold at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London and the finding of the Brilliant Reef in 1889. By drawing people and capital into North Queensland and by developing into an important centre, Charters Towers was to