Location: Charters Towers, Hughenden

District History

The district is named after the town of Charters Towers, where gold was discovered in the creek on Christmas Eve 1871 by a 12 year old Aboriginal boy named Jupiter Mosman.  Jupiter was the servant of Hugh Mosman, a victim of a Queensland pastoral slump trying his luck at Ravenswood. The son of Archibald Mosman of Mosman’s Bay, Sydney, Hugh later successfully participated in several mining ventures and became one of the social lions of Charters Towers. He named the gold find Charters Tors, after the goldfields commissioner “W.S.E.M. Charters” and the likeness of the rocky outcrops to south England tors. Tors became towers soon afterwards.  Where scouting was concerned, Charters Towers district was first formed in 1946.  [source: Scout Magazine (1980). Scout badges with Lindsay Knight. March, p.21]

Badge Description

Scout emblem

Mining Poppet Head Tower = Gold Mining (one of the old mine shafts houses a seismograph to measure earthquakes)

Lamp of learnng = Many boarding schools in the town.  These schools catered for the outback area of which Charters Towers was central.

Gold and Green background colour = rural industry in the area which, in 1981, was mainly beef, citrus fruits and grapes.