About Us

The Towers Jockey Club has a long history of providing community connections and social inclusion for the people of Charters Towers dating back to 1872. The importance of country racing to places like Charters Towers cannot be understated, with the Towers Jockey Club one of the places where people come together to catch up with friends and family and in doing so they provide support to one another in good times and bad. Racing has been important to the social fabric of the Charters Towers region for 150 years and the focus of the club is for that to remain the case for 150 more.

Gold is said to have first been discovered, in the area now known as Charters Towers, in the final days of 1871. By January of the following year the gold rush had begun, with many people flocking to the area in the hope of making their fortune. With that rush of miners came merchants, entrepreneurs, publicans and more, all eager to make a dollar or two.

It’s not so surprising then, that with the good gold discoveries in the district and the formation of many clubs and other civic organisations that there quickly developed a group interested in thoroughbred racing. The Charters Towers Jockey Club was formed in 1872 with the committee tasked with raising money through subscriptions to put towards financing a meeting. This the club managed to achieve in 1873.

But the first thoroughbred race meeting to be held in Charters Towers was conducted by the Christmas Towers Race Committee on December 26 and 27 in 1872.  This club held the first races on a course at Queen’s Flats which was marked out saplings.

As early as April 1873 the Towers Jockey Club’s race dates of July 30 and 31 were being advertised in papers around the state proclaiming the upcoming two day race meeting. The Towers Cup was held at this meeting, setting in place the Cup day tradition, which is in June or July of each year.

By 1876 the two clubs had amalgamated and in 1877 they moved the location of the racetrack to a more permanent setting on the northern side of town, where it remains to this very day.

Many notable businessmen like Isidor Lissner, Thaddeus O’Kane, Hamilton Rutherford, Graham Haygarth and Fred Johnson were heavily involved in the club, but one of the biggest driving forces in those early days was businessman Robert Russell. Mr Russell had a lifelong interest in the club, serving as treasurer, secretary and handicapper at different times. His lifelong dedication to the club is said to have been one of the reasons for its success during the depression and slump of gold mining in the town.

By 1900 there were green lawns, shade trees and extensive gardens at the track. Robert Witherspoon, a trained English gardener, had been brought in to get things ready ahead of the TJC Annual Races.

“Mr Robert Russell engaged Mr Witherspoon and gave him a free hand with the garden, and between them they earned the Towers course a wide reputation …” reported The Northern Miner on July 26, 1939.

Two grandstands were erected at the grounds and many a grand race event was held there, drawing in trainers from the surrounding cattle properties who often raced at picnic race meets in the district. These days Charters Towers is a hub for a significant number of people employed by the racing industry. Up to 60 horses train daily at the Towers Jockey Club track, which, at times, is more than those training in the major nearby regional centre of Townsville. The industry has an economic impact of around $2 million a year to the Charters Towers community, with as many as 4500 people currently using the facility. The club hosts four race meetings a year and it is hoped that in the shorter term they will be able to attract another two race meetings to the facility, providing an additional boost to the industry. The Charters Towers Amateur Race Club also races at the facility, hosting one major race meeting in October each year. The Towers Jockey Club aspires to be the major training centre for country racing in North Queensland and is taking steps to make this happen.

In more recent years the Towers Jockey Club committee has attracted more than $1.2 million in  funding, through the Building Better Regions Fund and Racing Queensland, to support a major track upgrade, new stalls for the horses, improved water supply and a major renovation of the 1970s bar, canteen and office facility. The track improvements and refurbishments were carried out in 2021, transforming the venue from a dated country race facility to a modern community events centre. The events centre can cater for up to 320 seated patrons, or 1000 standing in the undercover area, with a canteen/kitchen and bar able to easily cater for big race days.