Ravenswood, Queensland 🇦🇺 2025

Date: 18th June-1st July 2025 

Travelled: 550 kms from Armstrong Beach to Ravenswood  

Visited: Bowen and Ravenswood  

Stayed: Ravenswood Hotel, free, S20.09942, E146.88740  

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We escape Armstrong Beach driving back to Sarina as there is no dump point at the CP. Very inconvenient really and limits us staying there for more than a couple of days. It’s a 3 hour drive north to Bowen, mostly in drizzle, which clears a few kilometres before our turn.

The Harbour View CP at Bowen is one of our favourite haunts, this being our third visit. As we’ve previously done a post on Bowen I won’t do another. We book in for two weeks and settle in.

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Two weeks of doing laps at the pool and cycling the district intermingled with socialising with Lollie and Jim from Orange comes to a finish and it’s time to continue our travels. Having given up on the Bowen Rocket, we do some shopping and fill with the cheapest fuel in Bowen before returning to the Bruce once again.

Our time touring Queensland’s coast is finished as we turn west at Ayr for Ravenswood.

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Ravenswood, Charters Towers Regional, Queensland, Australia

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Ravenswood is the home of Queensland largest gold mine. The huge open cut mine and its tailing dam are visible on the map above but we cannot see either from ground level. Our visit is more about the history of Ravenswood as a gold rush town in the late 19th century and it’s a free stop as we head west. Ravenswood is 100 kilometres from anywhere literally.

The Railway Hotel offers a free camp, the publican Michael is welcoming and directs us to our campsite which is out the back. The Railway Hotel (circa 1901) is heritage listed. The grounds are scattered with old cars and machinery, amongst all this, numerous old petrol bowsers.

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Inside the hotel the theme continues, but it’s obviously well maintained and decorated as a grand hotel of its era. Wandering in for a drink at drinking time Michael tells us to explore the hotel and have a look around. The Railway is huge probably 20 bedrooms all with 12’ ceilings in pressed metal. Caste iron and brass beds throughout it’s like stepping back in time. We enjoy a drink with the locals who all seem to wander in around 6 pm.

Michael tells us the mine employees around 700 the majority of whom live in a dongle village just over the hill. The locals are very proud of Ravenswood and recommend the best sites for a walk.

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Next morning we head off on another one of Pam’s forced marches looking for the places of interest. The old town is somewhat scattered, numerous vacant blocks that have remnants of having once had a building or house.

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The sign to the ‘old arch bridge’ sounded promising, but it was a little underwhelming. No Hogwarts Express has passed through here for 80 years but we did find a colony of fruit bats making a dreadful racket. Apart from the bats we see lots of small rock wallabies bounding around the scrub as we walk by and more Indian Peafowl running here and there than we could count. Too quick for a photo unfortunately and presumably too quick for a fox either.

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Our last stop is Saint Patrick’s Church (circa 1871, but extended in 1884). It’s freshly painted and looks grand despite having the earth wall of the tailing dam only 50 metres behind it.

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Anyway that was our visit to Ravenswood. It’s so out of the way I’m unsure I would take the detour again, but there are still several other points of interest we never got to.

As we have a booking we best continue west once again for Charters Towers.

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Michael + Pam