Outback New South wales is a pretty spectacular place with rustic towns (Hay, Walgett, Hillston) punctuating big wide, dry swathes of land broken up by mighty rivers (Murrumbidgee and the Murray) and mining towns (Cobar and Lightning Ridge). We drove 1,300 kms over one week in late November and discovered some magical sights. We’ve collated the highlights of our 1 week in Outback NSW itinerary with three things to tick in each area.

A taste of Italy in Griffith and endless horizons in Hay

We started this leg of our adventure in Griffith, a big Italian flavoured town with houses decorated with frilly wrought iron, framed by intricate brick fences and with tradies utes parked out front emblazoned with Andreazia the Electrician and Valentino the Vet. Everyone seemed to parlio Italiano in the Main Street and the biggest queue in the street was outside Bertoldos gelateria and Giusesspies restaurant and bar. There’s even a restaurant called The Cartel which gives a nod to the trade the town is notorious for. After a walk around town and a bike ride up to Lake Wyangan Picnic Grounds, we headed across the Murrumbidgee Bridge into Darlington Point which sits right on the Murumbidgee river and has a pub, pharmacy, butcher, grocery store and a pretty good coffee shop. We stopped a little further on towards Hay, at a freecamp on the Murrumbidgee at a place called Sandy Point. This vast open area has clean flushing toilets, a sandy river beach and even a beach shower! It’s a great free camp with plenty of bins, great looping walks, plenty of shade from the towering river red gums and great reception both for TV and mobiles. We even had a ‘live’ art gallery on the doorstep – a large wheat Silo with two guys up a crane painting an artwork of two local WWII heroes whose families still live in town. 

The next day we headed to Hay, a small agricultural town which has seen better days. There were two of the three pubs open but many shopfronts empty and some shops closed. This is surprising given the great facilities around the town, from bike paths to tennis clubs to river beach, a great sunset viewing area, sculpture walk, art Silo, huge free Olympic sized pool, sports complex, hospital, Serviceman’s club and two supermarkets. There’s also a fantastic Shearing Museum called the Shear Experience which we visited and were treated to our own private shearing demonstration by “Jack’ out in an old shearing Shed that came from Murray Downs, one of the biggest stations in the district.  Jack told us that he used to shear 150-200 a day and was paid $1.70 net per sheep. He told us that wool used to sell for $1,800 per 190 kilo bale and that now due to COVID and struggling Chinese relations that its down to $800 a bale.

There’s some lovely walks along the Murrumbidgee such as Hay’s Bushy Bend sculpture park with steel sculptures of a blacksmiths anvil and one of an old canoe both of which doubled as seats. There was also one of the Cobb & Co. wheels depicted in all their states of challenges. from being bogged to broken, and one of the old punt that used to cross the river before the bridge was put in 1873.

Three things to tick in the Griffith-Hay region are: 1.  Gelato from Bertoldo’s in Griffith 2. Sunset viewing spot, Hay and 3. Sandy Point beach on the Murrumbidgee River

Cobar along the Kidman Way

Departing Hay, we took the Midwestern highway to Goolgowi then turned on to the Kidman way towards Cobar. The Kidman way is named after Sir Sidney Kidman (no relation to Nicole), who had an inspiring vision to open up outback New South Wales. We stopped at Hillston for lunch and were keen to take the swinging bridge walk across the Lachlan river but sadly the bridge and the walk was closed. Hillston has some colourful emu sculptures and an active arts community but it was too hot to explore any galleries with the sun searing at 40c so we headed on to our destination for the night, Cobar. This stretch was 260 km long and the signs out of town warned us there were no services or petrol until Cobar and to watch out for wildlife on roads. Unfortunately all the animals we saw had already met an early death on the blacktop with black pigs, feral goats, wallabies, kangaroos, Emus, echidnas, lizards and numerous types of birds all strewn along the roadside which led us to call this stretch roadkill highway. The Kidman way is fairly narrow up to Cobar with little shoulder to make room for the road trains to pass. The terrain was flat with crumbly red earth and lots of toppled over dead trees baring bright red clumps of dirt around their uprooted base! It looked like a fire had gone through maybe a dozen years ago then a massive wind just recently flattened them all. 

We stayed at the Cobar Caravan Park and rode our bikes 1km into the Olympic memorial pool and swam and read until the searing sun went down. The next morning we explored Cobar before it got too hot and rode our bikes at 6.30 am to the Great Cobar Heritage Centre which tells the story of the Great Cobar Copper Mines set up in the 1870’s. Unfortunately the centre was closed for renovations but we read the plaques that declared that during its boom Cobar had 15,000 people – there’s now about 5,000 – and that at its height the Copper mine processed ore at the rate of 1,000 tonnes a day. There were also a few gold mines in the area but Copper is what its famous for. There was a fire in one mine in 1920 that burned for 16 years! Glen Ore still operate copper mines in Cobar and get an average of 12% ore grades compared to a global average of .5 – 2% making it one of the richest ore bodies in the world.  We rode up to the Fort Bourke Lookout as the sun came up and enjoyed an amazing view down into the New Cobar Open Cut Gold Mine.

Three things to tick in Cobar are: 1. Great Cobar Heritage Centre 2. The Cobar open cut gold mine 3. Fort Bourke Lookout

Bourke to Walgett

This stretch of the Kidman Way from Cobar to Bourke is wider and very smooth. We saw more wild animals, this time alive, along the side of the road – mostly goats, kangaroos and pigs. We had planned to stop at the Gundabooka National Park 45 km before Bourke to explore the Mulgowan Aboriginal rock art site but it was pouring with rain so we kept motoring on in to Bourke. First stop was the Back O’Bourke Visitor Information and Exhibition Centre which was blessedly air conditioned, so we bought tickets for the exhibit and booked a 2.30 Paddle Boat tour down the Darling. 

The Exhibition explained how Bourke was settled as a trade centre to service large sheep stations and named after a governor of NSW ( not the flawed explorer). At one stage t was the second busiest port in the country shifting massive loads of 150k bales of wool down the Darling River on paddle  steamers. There was a lot about the four years Henry Lawson spent in Bourke writing his ballads and also about Fred Hollows who is buried in Bourke. There were audio tales of the larrikins whom lived and worked in the district such as the afghan camel drivers, bush rangers, indigenous trackers, Chinese traders and the drovers. There was even a macabre explanation of where the saying ‘The black stump’ came from – apparently a drover left his wife to cook the midday meal while he rounded up the sheep one windy day and her dress caught fire and when he returned all that was left of her looked like a blackened tree stump! 

We stayed at Kidmans Camp for the night, a dusty campground we chose for it’s Swimming pools and after a cool soak we walked down to the Darling for our paddle steamer tour on the Jandra, a remodel of the original boat made in 2000. It was a peaceful cruise, and we learned some river and trading history along the way. Sat night we planned to eat out at a restaurant in town as we’d run out of supplies so drove in to town but the dry electric storm had taken the power out and everything was closed even the IGA!  Bourke is a pretty rough town with only a small pub and a bowling club so slim pickings for dining in the best of times! So we headed back to our Camp which had lost power too so no A/C for the van, no camp kitchen and some very creative foraging was done to pull together a scratch dinner on our gas stove which we ate under the shade of the trees then slept with all the van doors open and our trusty 12volt fan! 

The next morning we were on the Kameleroi Way from Bourke to Walgett, 160 km 2.5 hrs away. The road started off smooth and a few segments were so freshly sealed you could  still smell the tar!  We drove through Berriwarra a small town where there are ancient fish traps built into the rocky river bed 40,000 years ago  but we didn’t stop as everything was closed and barred up either due to it being a Sunday or Covid? A little further on was Walgett positioned on the river flats where the Barwon and the Namoi rivers meet. Walgett is quite a decent size town ( pop 2500) with a nice river walkway ( too hot to do) and large swimming pool and artesian water hole plus the ubiquitous lush bowling green and club. Like In all these outback towns the Bowling club serves as bar/ restaurant more than a bowling club!  

Three things to tick in this area are: 1. Back O Bourke Visitor information centre 2. Cruise on a paddle steamer down the Darling and 3. Soak in the Walgett Artesian waterholes.

A gem of a time in Lightning Ridge

Lightning Ridge is only 75 km from Walgett so we decided to push on along the Castlereigh highway to the Crocodile Caravan Park in Lightning Ridge as it had a pool (that used to house the resident Croc!) and it was still super hot.  Lightning Ridge was a real eye opener and looked like the set of Mad Max. It was very post apocalyptic with giant gopher mounds of pale rock everywhere from where a miner had dug for opal.

We got up early the next morning to ride in the cool of the day down to the local public ‘bore baths’ for a sunrise soak. The 42c water is meant to ease aches and pains and it comes up naturally hot from 1 km underground from the great artesian basin which covers 22% of Australia! We rode back to the park feeling like jelly and after breakfast headed to a tour of the Chamber of the Black Hand opal mine. This was a mine set up by a guy called Ron Canlin, an Englishman who was in the navy and decided to come out to The Ridge to try fossicking. He never found much Opal in his mine and decided to carve replicas of paintings into the sandstone walls of his cave instead. It’s quite astonishing what he has done using just a bone handled butter knife and steel Wool. There were tunnels filled with carvings of almost every famous politician, religious leader, film characters and even statues and paintings. We also watched a film on the area and learned that Lightning Ridge was located at the edge of an ancient inland sea ( the great artesian basin) and that over the years a lot of the old trees, shells, fish bones etc had fossilised and created opals.

There are a series of ‘car door’ self drive tours you can take that reveal the quirky architecture (some people have built castles, others, clocktowers from old bottles, churches from sheets of tin and thong trees) of the area. We did the red car door route and the yellow car door route following the old car doors nailed to trees to find our way.

We also stopped in at artist John Murray’s studio. Famous for his quirky Emu pictures, he has also captured the colours of the land in a beautiful way.

Three things to tick on a trip to Lightning Ridge are: 1. Car door tours of the different sections of Lightning Ridge 2. Tour of the Chamber of the Black Hand opal mine to see incredible carvings and 3. An early morning soak in the free Artesian Bore pool.

Soaking it up in Morree

We took the rather rough Gwidr highway east from Lightning Ridge to Moree for our last stop on this trip. Moree is famous for its murals which decorate the many alleyways and buildings around town. It also has some beautiful examples of Federation style architecture and a very large Bath House perfect for enjoying the Great Artesian Basin pools.

Three things to tick on a trip to Moree are: 1. The hot Artesian pools 2. The Mural walk and 3. Historical walk past the many examples of fine Federation architecture.