Car Hire Charter Towers - Mini guide to Charter Towers

The gold mining town of Charter Towers is located to the southwest of Townsville and is arguably the most beautiful inland city in Queensland. This superb historic town is full of gracious buildings and surrounded by numerous unusual and interesting attractions.

It may not have the range of domestic architecture that makes the similar town of Ipswich so distinctive but in terms of public architecture, Charters Towers is unrivalled. The Zara Clark Museum is one of the most elegant and interesting buildings in the town. Once a general merchant's shop, it now has an interesting collection of local memorabilia.

For a tour of Charter Towers' urban delights, the Visitor Information and Orientation Centre, at 74 Mosman street, is a good place to start. It has excellent interactive displays of the town's attractions. In this area and in the surrounding streets, namely Mosman and Gill streets, there are over 60 buildings of historical significance.

Charter Towers has a good choice of hotels, motels, guesthouses, farmstays and caravan parks and a wide range of cafés and restaurants. For outstanding fishing and swimming, head for the Venus Gold Battery, a Flat Rock camping reserve with two kilometres of frontage leading on to the Burdekin River. Fishing can also be enjoyed at Burdekin Dam, which is stocked annually with barramundi.

Those with cars have a choice of two great vantage points over the city; the best is the Towers Hill Lookout, which rises about 125m above the plain. The Rotary Lookout is signposted off Mosman street. Farther afield, Great Basal Wall National Park is a haven for many birds and animals, including a large colony of flying foxes.

By car, Charter Towers is 130kms inland along the Flinders Highway from Townsville (Townsville is on the Bruce Highway). Trains and Greyhound buses run from Townsville, and there is a domestic airport near the town.