Behold the eternal sentinal above our city

MY first glimpse was in the November of 1982, I have loved him ever since.

It was in a very old magazine, This month In Townsville, and his face, weathered, mysterious, enigmatic, and a dictionary and a half of other apt words, could still describe our Cutheringa, our magnificent Castle hill.

Maybe we don’t relish his place in our city enough.

Yes there’s the walking tracks, and the views, but there should be so much more.

This eternal sentinel has seen the arrival of our First Australians, seen the Japanese pirates, supposedly the Phoenicians, Chinese and Ptolemy’s, maybe even Adam! Well there’s a few Chonky apple trees up there.

Old man Cutheringa watched Captain Cook sail past, and famously had shipwrecked sailor Jimmy Morrill often wander his glorious slopes watching out to sea for possible rescue.

He was loved by one of my favourite locals, Edmund Banfield, who lived on the slope near where Kennedy St meets the hillside road.

This incredible man was the Beachcomber of Dunk Island, and also worked for this great newspaper.

He famously wrote of our granite sentinel, that the local tribes told him at one time vines and beautiful rainforest hung over the face of our hill, what a sight it would have been.

He also, along with a local councillor in the late 1890s planted trees on the hill, while the new settlement was busy cutting the remaining trees down.

Apparently some of his trees survive, I’d love to know which ones. In the early 1980s along with a mate, we planted some bouganvillieas on the slopes, as I still believe our hill would look remarkable with the colour of these plants, like the ones near Castle Cragg. Needless to say, I failed dismally. Other historical events, the Americans wanted to knock it down for a causeway to the island during the war, ( what a disaster that would have been) and it was supposedly closed in 1943 when an underground command centre was built, and that mystery continues to this day, and tomorrow too I’d say.

All this stuff you no doubt knew, but something I didn’t know, for sure anyway, was that there was a ‘ question mark’ painted on our heritage listed hill before the Saint! Fair dinkum. Peter Higgins told me, and even sent a photo of it.

Supposedly, and this fact may have come from the West End pub on Friday night, late on a Friday night, it was painted there because they couldn’t make up their mind where to put the television towers, Castle Hill or Mount Stuart. Great story, and I believe it. What I’ve also been unreliably told, the RAAF painted it out, but they didn’t abseil over the face, so how did they do it? Apparently they tossed paint over it by helicopter.

If you look to the left of our Saint, you can see where it was, sorta.

This hill we call our Castle, as the sunsets and he turns a masterpiece in orange, a little to the right, on the second face, you can see him asleep, let’s hope he doesn’t wake up. Happy days. PS. When is that great restaurant being built, eh …. maybe the question mark needs to return.