2/10/17 Another goldrush town

 Saturday was golf day again , and it worked well for me scoring with 78 shots - one of my best games in the last few years - and I won the day as well !! It was an entertaining day - I played with a local Chinese Restaurant owner , he was fun to play with .

 Today we headed off to another gold rush town - Ravenswood . It's 40 klms toward Townsville and another 40 klms from the highway .
 Today there's a population of 200 , during the gold rush there were over 5,000 - 30 hotels - they liked a drink !! now there are 2 hotels - the Railway Hotel and the Imperial . Both are magnificent buildings .

  Here's one of the old mining buildings and some machinery .

 We found a Chevrolet Belair Ute - hadn't seen one of those before .

  There's a garden bed of poinsettia beside the information booth looking good .

 Here's a rundown of the buildings left in town , first the ambulance station .

This is the general store / post office / service station .

 Courthouse / Museum

 Inside the museum - a dentists chair & drill .

 School on the left , School house on the right .

 These people certainly wanted a view , or some breeze below the house - they succeeded !!

 The picnic tables in the park are covered in mosaic tiles , each one depicting a scene or birds for animals - quite clever !!

 We went for a drive 3klms out of town to the White Blow . It's a rather large lump of white quartz rock sticking out of the ground about 8 to 10 m , and would be 50 m around the base .

  Back into town and up to the Carpentaria Gold Mine Lookout . There is still an active gold mine in town , this lookout looks out over the pit . The lovely green water is deep , you can see 3 layers of the pit , in a photo at the lookout there are at least 8 levels - so a minimum of 5 are below the water .

 There are amazing colours in the cut walls .

 As with most modern mines there's a lot of spoil formed up to make new hills and mountains - it never seems to be put back into the gigantic hole in the ground they have created - nothing seems to grow well in it either !! It's a lot of visual pollution !!
 As a comparison , here's the clean remains of the old mines and processing plants . Here's an old boiler that obviously powered machinery to crush & sort ore .

 This is part of that machinery - feeding power to operate the gold battery .

 A hexagonal chimney !

Another battery .

 And last but not least , another strainer post .

 It's amazing how mining companies can take all their profits , close up their mines and walk away without bothering to clean up or repatriate their sites so they can be used again - funny how governments let them do it as well !!! Okay rant over , here's a map link :- https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aOj1u0MsjKe57U9GVNbef7K71ts&usp=sharing