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 play an important role in the opening up of north Queensland as a whole. It was, at its peak, the second town in Queensland. Possibly because of the richness of the ore at Charters Towers, some of the mines were run without much regard for the most efficient and modern methods. As geologist J. Malcolm McLaren noted in his Queensland Mining and Milling Practice in 1901, many had been established before metallurgy became an exact science. Towards the end of the century, there was considerable interest in improving methods in what had become a very important industry in Queensland. Agitation for technical education in mining methods in Charters Towers began in the 1880s. A Government Mineralogical Officer, A.W. Clarke, was appointed in 1887, and in the following year a School of Mines Committee was set up to meet the government's offer of a pound for pound subsidy to establish a school. They were unable to collect sufficient funds and the scheme was temporarily abandoned with Clarke being recalled in 1892. In 1896 a Mine and Mill Manager's Association was formed. Meetings were held monthly at the old Town Hall where papers on subjects connected with mining were presented and discussed. It soon became apparent that few members of the association, most of whom had practical rather than theoretical knowledge, could understand the more technical papers. This gave impetus to a renewed interest in establishing a technical school to teach subjects related to mining along the lines of the noted School of Mines in Ballarat and Otago. It was decided to erect a building to be used as a Mining Institute, and a public subscription was taken up to finance the project, raising for the building and equipment. A foundation stone was laid by Edward David Miles on Friday 3 March