Poppet Head Plaza · Charters Towers
Australia’s largest hand-made mosaic — five million tiles, telling the story of a gold rush that built a city.
The story it tells
In the wet summer of 1871, a prospecting party camped in the ranges around Towers Hill, hoping the creeks would run gold. They never did. It was a horse boy named Jupiter Mosman who found it — a single stone, glinting, that would turn a stretch of dry bush into the second-largest city in Queensland.
“Following a flash of lightning, on the eve of Christmas.”
Aided by historical photographs of real people and places from the local archives, award-winning artist Trisha Lambi told the tale first in oil on canvas — then across eleven mosaic panels, seven and a half metres tall and eighty metres long — over five million hand-laid tiles and some ten thousand hours of work. What follows is that story, panel by panel.
Fifty years, read left to right — exactly as you would standing before it.
Hugh Mosman's prospecting party hoped to find gold in the creeks around Towers Hill — but the summer rains had yet to arrive. Instead Jupiter, the party's young horse boy, walked out and returned with a piece of stone glittering with gold.
Why did Jupiter wander out that evening? Local mythology holds that he was chasing the party's horses after they bolted — following a flash of lightning on the eve of Christmas. The northern gold rush was born of a storm.
Word travelled south, and in late 1872 thousands of miners rushed the field. But there would be no easy alluvial fortune here — the gold of the Towers lay locked in hard rock, deep underground.
Miners worked small claims with mates, following outcrops down into the goldfield. Poppet heads rose to hoist men below, chasing quartz reefs where beautifully mineralised stone glitters even in the fitful light of a candle.
David Brown's pyrites works stepped down the eastern face of Towers Hill — an expensive way to coax gold from old tailings. The arrival of cheap cyanide treatment in 1892 made it redundant almost overnight.
Mining was dangerous work. Heat, punishing labour and poor ventilation took their toll at depth, and few miners escaped the chest troubles of the reef. Every ounce raised was hard-won.
The most important man in a mining town was the assayer. How often is his verdict awaited with anxiety when stone has been placed in his hands? On his analysis rested whether a reef would be worked — or abandoned.
By 1892 the town wore its wealth in handsome banks and grand arcades. In the Stock Exchange on Mosman Street — still the most loved building in town — fortunes in gold shares were won, and sometimes lost.
The maker
Award-winning fine artist Trisha Lambi first painted the entire saga in oil on canvas, guided by photographs of the real people and places who lived it. Only then was the work translated — tile by tile, more than five million of them — into the largest hand-made mosaic in the country.
Plaques accompany each panel along the landscaped plaza, so every visitor can read the history held in the imagery, one moment at a time.
Seven metres tall. Eighty metres long.
At its peak in 1899 the field yielded 319,572 ounces of gold. The wall remembers every year of it.
The Wall of History runs along the road-side wall of Poppet Head Plaza in the heart of Goldtower Central — open air, and always free to visit.
Goldtower Central is Charters Towers’ newest precinct for shopping, services, dining and tourism. Our team is here to help you find your way around or answer any questions — please don’t hesitate to get in touch.