Date of Adventure 7 and 8 November 2024
I’d been advised by folks I met in Mareeba that Ravenswood is worth visiting. A big part of the attraction was that there are two old pubs from the early gold mining days. Before that I spent a couple of days a little ways out of Townsville to have time to get into the big city and restock. It’s going to be a while before I’ve got really good grocery stores. The drive to Ravenswood from Townsville is pretty easy. And, there’s free camping at the hotels. I decided to stay at the Railroad Hotel which might have been a mistake, in retrospect. But it was fine. More about the camping and hotel later.
Ravenswood was a gold mining town long ago and there are still a lot of relics and old buildings around town. But one thing I didn’t realize is that they’ve started mining again. I guess the new mine officially restarted in early 2023. But when you drive into town it’s pretty obvious. You can see the tailings piled up into a flat hill.
And when walking around town I came across this sign that kind of gives it all away.
I asked around in the pubs but it seems that the locals don’t really know a lot about the modern mine. I was told that the mine provides places for the workers to live and that the fly in or drive in for a few weeks at a time. There were quite a few mine trucks driving through town and while I was in the pub in the Imperial Hotel several miners came in and purchased cases of beer. Which, by the way, was kind of surprising. The price of a case of XXXX beer was pretty close to the price for been in Townsville. I would have thought the pubs would have raised it a bunch.
So back to the town itself. There were a lot of pretty cool old relics and old buildings. I’ll just post a bunch of pictures for y’all to see.
While walking around town in the evening, I went over by the school. Yeah, I was a little surprised that there was a school in a town of about 300. The athletic field had a few hundred wallabies eating the grass. Interesting that these guys were really skittish and started running off as soon as I made myself visible. I’ve seen lots of kangaroos in populous areas and they don’t seem to think twice about the people in the area.
I had a couple of beers at the Imperial and the few folks at the pub were pretty friendly and talkative.
As I mentioned, I camped at the Railway Hotel.
Early in the morning, before the hotel had really opened, I went roaming around taking photos of the interior. It’s a funky, old time place. I kind of wondered what it would be like staying in the hotel. Bathrooms were down the hall but looked clean and orderly. But I don’t think that there was anyone staying there at all. Certainly in the pub, in the evening there was only one couple and they were pretty obviously locals.
I don’t know why but I didn’t get any photos of the pub in the Railway Hotel. It’s cool but not as cool as the one at the Imperial. The Railway also had all kinds of old, interesting detritus all over the grounds. And a crazy electrical circuit breaker setup
One of the weirdest things about Ravenswood is the number of peacocks just roaming all over town. They kind of hid out in the bushes but there must be hundreds of the suckers. And noisy!!! They were calling from random places all day and all night. I’ve gotten used to bird noises of various kinds. There are huge numbers of interesting wild birds around here. All over Australia I've seen some very different birds. One that I didn't manage to see was the cassowary when I was in the areas where they are found. But lots of parrots of different kind.
Again, this is just a bunch of photos of things in town. I’ve got a shitload more. Maybe I should learn to walk around narrating into my camera and taking videos.