Ravenswood & Backroad

Okay due to the popular demand of the photographs taken nearWhite Blow , I decided to give you some more insight of the local town that holds  White Blowin it’s grasp and include the beaten track that leads to the Burdekin.  It seemed the Leichhardt Range and it’s lookout were a little popular…

Ravenswood, though quite small, has a great deal of history in gold mining and it’s commerce.  I was amazed at the history kept and shared with it’s locals, passerbys and mining pricks personnel such as myself.  Ravenswood truly was a once-thriving gold prosperous mining town, it had amazing Aussie (now / once heritage) buildings with over 4,000 residents and including 50 pubs.  That’s like 80 people per pub!

Mt Wright Underground stockpile and hauling.

It grew and died a few times as chemistry, machinery and technology improved from the mid 1800’s to spot on 1900.   But eventually died in the ass as miners moved to more stable areas and mining became more for share holders, and the placed became a renewed BOOMTOWN for gold rush enthusiasts.  The population grew to over 5,000 people and truly was a spectacular place for somewhere so far north (apparently, so I am told…).  eventually around 1920 the place population once again dissapated and the town became a ghost town with heritage.  Now with a population of just under 100 people and a rotating roster of miners, the town survives on tourism and out of town miners.  As the surface (pit) gold mine (also silver is harvested by the way) slowly ramps down to a halt, a new underground mine is starting at Mt Wright (just 10 minutes north) which is where I once worked…  Now be warned this is where my previous goat story comes about.  Talking of goats, one of the historic letters brags on about how many wild goats are in the area, now they are just in my damned way any time I decide to pass through the backroad to the dam.  Seriously just check out the museum for so much literature history, old photos and so much more than expected from such a true ghost town.

The town itself has two hotels / pubs left The Imperial Hotel and Railway Hotel.  The Railway hotel is situated next the the historical Miners Cottage.

But every public place offers great historic relics, memoirs and stories.  I really hope that one day I can access the underground mines scattered secretly through out the area.

So as you take the bull dust road hidden behind a now demolished location and a creek, that travels past White Blow, you come to the lookout, depending on the time I knocked off work was dependant of the shots…

~ by John the Aussie on June 25, 2012.