Charters Towers

Poppet Head & GoldTower

When we first arrived at Charters Towers, we went to the Poppet Head Plaza at the rather controversial GoldTower precinct – which officially opened in December of 2022 – to have a look at the mosaic murals that we’d heard so much about and seen photos of, and wanted to see for ourselves.

We loved the whole area!

The murals, the historical info boards, the gold mine display, and of course, the mosaics.
At 5m tall and around 80m in length, it really is quite an amazing spectacular.

They are a work of Art that absolutely has to be seen to be truely appreciated; with each amazing scape being made up of thousands of inch by inch tiny mosaic tiles.

Accomodation

We stayed at the Dalrymple Van Park on the edge of town, which was a lovely big Park, and our large grassy site backed on to the Golf Course, and the extra field that they use for cricket when the Ashes are held each year or so.

There are two sets of Amenities, however we found that the ones at the back of the Park (we can’t comment on the other set) whilst they were good, they were however closed for around 3 hours on day one that we were there, and for people who are unable to walk the substantial distance to the other facilities, that’s a very long time for amenities to be closed.

The laundry was a busy hive of activity, and machines were $4 a wash, however we didn’t need to do laundry.

There is homemade fudge which is widely advertised on check-in, however we found it be be quite expensive for what you actually got.

There is a great camp kitchen, with loads of seating and a freezer that gave us ice – again, in around 2 hours.
A fire is lit by Staff most nights in the fire-pit, and on some nights they also have live music.

Vet visit

We took the opportunity to see if we could get an appointment with a Vet at the Charters Towers Vet Service ( a branch of the same Practice that we usually visit) for Mabi, as her travel-medications were getting low and we wouldn’t have enough to get to our next scheduled vet visit in 3 weeks.
These are different to the medications she needs for her Addisons Disease management, which we had loads of.

We had also a week earlier ordered some of the RC biscuits that our dogs eat from the Practice, and would be heading there to pick them up.

Thankfully, our eldest Daughter went and picked the biscuits up for us, prior to her heading off for her evening shift at work, and she not only managed to secure an appointment with the Vet the next day for Mabi, but also bought us back some other items we had forgotten to buy from the shops on our way into town.

Most importantly – some DD batteries for the fridge fan, which helps a lot in keeping everything much colder than without it.

Another thing we thought we had, but then couldn’t find when we went looking for them!

Our Wounded Windscreen

The next day, our Daughter took Mabi and the Short One to the Vet, whilst the Tall One and Molly went to the windscreen repair guy to discuss getting some chips in our windscreen sorted.

As it turns out, the windscreen guy said he wouldn’t advise repairing it just yet, as it turns out our windscreen is a dual layer windscreen, and the pressure required to do the infill for a chip repair would likely break the windscreen, and whilst he could get us another windscreen, it would be a bit of a stuff around to get it installed if this were to happen.

Instead, we have taped it as recommended, and will worry about it further down the track.

Phewwww – dodged a potential bit of chaos there, and we thank Rob from Charters Towers Auto Glass for his time, patience, knowledge and explanation.
Very appreciated.

The visit to the Vet was very successful, and we got to meet the lovely Vet Danielle from @TablelandVet, who was incredibly sweet with Mabi and after a full check over and assessment, kindly sorted out our travel-medication issue.

Biiig relief for us all.

Fam time

Before our Daughter went to work the next afternoon, she was able to bring two of our grandbabies over to visit us for an hour, and it was lovely to see all three of them.

The kids are growing so fast, and the eldest is already taller than his LilG (which some would say isn’t very hard!).

Until next time – happy travels, and make the moments matter.