We left Chillagoe and made good time arriving back at Herberton on the Atherton Tablelands well before lunch. We had booked in to the Wild River Holiday Park because we intended to do some more exploring around this lovely part of the world. I meant to say yesterday that we had seen huge blocks of marble everywhere near Chillagoe. The owner of the hotel said that many of them were “seconds” and won’t be used. They were now being used as barriers around old mining pits. We did notice that the bar in the pub was made entirely of marble and today I noticed an old table in the caravan park that had a polished marble top on it. After settling in to our caravan site we made a short drive out to a very interesting, historic, mining town call Irvinebank. It is full of heritage listed buildings and once had a population of 2,000 people but now only 300 odd people live there. Our first visit was to The Loudoun House Museum. This house was built by mining entrepreneur, John Moffat in 1884. It was built mainly of red cedar and corrugated iron and is the oldest high-set (2 storey) like this in North Queensland. The house was full of memorabilia from the Moffat family and the towns early mining days. Rob even found a piece of equipment in the museum similar to one he found when cleaning out Dad’s shed and was able to find out what it was called and what it was used for. After this we drove around the town and viewed the many other heritage listed buildings before returning back to Herberton.
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