Visit the Outback including Broken Hill, Cobar, Silverton and White Cliffs
The Outback region provides a unique Australian experience that brings the visitor in contact with the ancient and spectacular landscape of the Outback. While in the Outback New South Wales you will discover a network of rivers and lakes, astonishing wildlife and meet the Aussie characters who are the spirit of this red land. Here you'll find rugged beauty, vivid red earth, bright blue skies, endless horizons and prolific native wildlife. Of equal interest are the mining towns of Broken Hill, Cobar, Silverton and White Cliffs
The desert habitat provides a home to many animal and plant species: big red kangaroos at Sturt National Park, a flock of ibis resting at the Menindee Lakes and emus racing across the Mundi Mundi Plains.
Follow the Darling River for a touring adventure from Brewarrina or Bourke to Wentworth where the Darling meets the Murray.
To experience 'the real Australia' try a spot of Outback camping. Sleeping under a blanket of stars is a magical experience. Camping is relatively easy in the outback provided you are well equipped and fully self sufficient. Many people are attracted to the outback merely for the chance to experience the solitude that one cannot find in modern cities. Or experience the underground life at White Cliffs.
Mungo National Park is famous for its Walls of China dunescape, while Mutawintji Historical Site contains one of the best collections of Aboriginal art in New South Wales. The much-photographed Walls of China is a series of sand and clay dunes carved by wind and water over thousands of years. The dune system has preserved countless Aboriginal campfires, cooking hearths and burial sites.
Just one hour's drive south-east of the red, dry, dust and bush scrub of Broken Hill is a massive lake system which holds more water than Sydney Harbour. Within the Kinchega National Park are three vast lakes - Menindee, Cawndilla and Pamamaroo - and a couple of smaller ones, which are all accessible for the activity of your choice: camping, swimming, fishing or boating. Kinchega National Park covers an area of 44,000 hectares.
Wentworth, where the Darling meets the Murray River, has become Australia's premier destination for houseboating holidays. The two rivers offer plenty of scenic variety. You can nose your way quietly down the narrow, winding Darling, or float down the broad, lazy Murray.
Mining and exploration leases have yielded gas, gemstones and minerals bringing a rough bred of people to this inhospitable area. You can visit Bourke, which in recent years has become the centre of a thriving cotton growing industry. Although history remains Bourke's strongest attraction, the district is becoming increasingly popular with bushwalkers, anglers and those wanting to experience the outback first-hand.
Mt Gundabooka, some 80 kms from Bourke you can view a number of Aboriginal rock paintings and is ideal for bushwalking and birdwatching. Kangaroos, emus and other wildlife can be seen in abundance.
The newly-listed Culgoa National Park offers secluded camping areas on the banks of the Culgoa River. Apart from birdwatching, the park offers coolibah woodlands and sandhills carpeted with wildflowers following spring rains.
A new addition to the Bourke calendar is the Outback Fishing Challenge. With prizes worth up to $10,000 on offer, it is one of the biggest inland fishing competitions in Australia.
Broken Hill is the western most town in New South Wales and gives an extraordinary sense of remoteness long before you even reach the town. Broken Hill began as a working class mining town around 1885, boasting the richest deposit of silver, lead and zinc in the world. Mine tours - either on the surface, underground or simulated - are a major attraction here. The Line of Lode South Mine is a working mine and offers two or four hour surface tours. In recent years Broken Hill has established itself as the centre of the outback arts movement. You could spend a full day or even longer visiting the 35 art galleries in town. Just outside town is the Broken Hill Sculpture Symposium, situated in a reserve known as the Living Desert. Completed in 1993, the sculpture park contains sandstone works by 12 different international sculptors. The circle of sculptures, which crown Sundown Hill, has become Broken Hill's new icon.
Mungo National Park
The mysterious and beautiful World Heritage listed Mungo National Park plays host to the remains of the earliest known humans to inhabit the Australian continent. More then 60,000 years old these remains are having a revolutionary impact on our concept of ancient Aboriginal history.
The Mungo National Park is the site of an acient vast lake providing an environment suitable for sustaining animals such as giant kangaroos, wombats, Tasmanian Tigers and Devils. These conditions also brought with it the earth's longest continuous human habitations. As the lake dried up it has left an extraordinary history in the form of fossils.
Since the lake dried up many centuries ago, winds have swept storms of sand up from the lake floor, dumping it on the shoreline and creating the famous Mungo lunette. This is the site of the spectacular 'Great Walls of China' which have been carved from successive layers of the lunette by many years of erosion. As the lunette erodes it leaves behind the remains of aboriginal civilisation and animal fossils.
The Mungo lunette is eerie in its stark ancient beauty with its strange stone outcrops standing like sentinels to a mystic dreamtime past.
However there is much more to the park then the lunette and the 'China Walls'. It's red sandy country is home to a diverse array of animals, birds and plantlife. All are there to be seen when you explore the carefully plotted pathways within the park.
There is a camping ground within the Park and quality accommodation at the Mungo Lodge. A range of guided tours may also be taken to discover more about the history of this unique landscape.
The New South Wales Outback is one of those rare experiences that taps into the very essence of the Australian heritage. A journey here will not only fill your photo album but, more importantly, touch your soul.
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