An outback safari in Broken Hill
Over60 travel writer Lucy Jones heads to Outback NSWon a three-day trip with Tri State Safaris visiting Broken Hill, Menindee and White Cliffs.
In 1928 a newly married Catherine Alice Simpson arrived in Menindee, a tiny outpost in the far west of New South Wales on the banks of the Darling River. She was 21 years old, barely five foot tall and was to move into a small house behind the post office along with her husband, the postmaster. It didn’t rain once for the next three years.
Almost 90 years later, I find myself standing in front of the very same post office. Catherine was my great grandmother. Her memories of Menindee seemed to consist mostly of sweeping – endless sweeping – in an attempt to keep the all-pervasive red desert dust out of the house. Towards the end of the drought, the dust was piled so high around town that it was possible to walk right over the paddock fences.
I’m here with Tri State Safaris on a three-day Outback Exposure tour. Guide Geoff Spangler is at the wheel of our comfortable safari vehicle and proves to be an endless font of local knowledge and amusing anecdotes. I also suspect he has some sort of bionic vision. It was not uncommon for him to spot a perfectly camouflaged lizard no bigger than your hand while flying along at 100 kilometres an hour.
We tend to think of the ‘outback’ as covering only central Australia and it’s easy to forget that it actually stretches across six states. This corner of NSW, close to the border of South Australia, is something of a forgotten gem. In the mid-1800s towns like Menindee and nearby Wilcannia were effectively the edge of the known universe for European settlers in eastern Australia. They were thriving outposts for travellers and settlers, and are still dotted with grand sandstone public buildings, though most now stand empty.
The region is most famous as the jumping off point for ill-fated explorers Burke and Wills. Burke, the leader of the expedition, was a military man and police officer. Wills was a scientist and surveyor. Neither had the kind of experience that would seem necessary for a 3,250-kilometre trek across the continent, through some of the most inhospitable territory on the planet. But it was the great Victorian age of exploration and they set off with an admirable, if foolhardy, confidence. The group left Menindee in 1860 and was never seen again.
For all its dust and ferocious heat, the desert here is remarkably beautiful. A prolonged drought had been broken some months before and everything is (relatively) lush and green. Thousands of delicate paper daisies line the road. Emus and kangaroos are plentiful, prompted to breed in greater numbers by the plentiful water. The Menindee Lakes are filling rapidly and water is pouring down the Darling River. We board the small River Lady boat for a cruise on Lake Wetherell, where the contrast is staggering. In March 2016 the lake was completely dry, but now it’s over capacity and we are winding between the ghostly trunks of trees reaching from metres of water.
After spending the night on the banks of the Darling, we head north for the opal mining town of White Cliffs. You know a place is hot when residents choose to burrow their homes into the hillside to escape the scorching sun. The town is consistently one of the hottest places in the country and during summer daytime temperatures rarely dip below the high 30s. In January 1973 the mercury hit a record 48.6 degrees, which is enough to make anyone want to live underground.
Thankfully, the pool at the White Cliffs Underground Motel is always refreshingly cool. The hotel itself is a winding labyrinth of narrow corridors that open out into high-ceilinged rooms carved right out of the rock. Temperatures inside stay at a comfortable 22 to 23 degrees all year round, but don’t expect any phone reception of Wi-Fi inside.
White Cliffs is a town built, quite literally on opal. It was first discovered in 1884 by a pair of stockhands out kangaroo shooting and soon more than 2,000 miners were digging into the white sandstone in search of the glittering stones. In 1902, 140,000 pounds of opals were mined and sold. But its heyday was short lived. The First World War called the miners away and brought an end to trade with Germany, then one of the world’s largest opal markets, and the town never really recovered.
A few hardy prospectors remain and one, Graeme, takes us down his mine. He spends as much time as possible below ground, carving out the rock by hand with the passionate fervour of a gambler on the cusp of his next big win. Which, I guess, he essentially is.
On the way back to Broken Hill the next day, there’s one more stop. The ancient Mutawintji National Park is of special significance to the local indigenous people and rock art here dates back some 8,000 years. Indigenous guide Mark takes us into the restricted Historic Site, home to one of the state’s best collections of Aboriginal art. It’s humbling to think of how little time we have inhabited this continent and how much has come before us.
*The three-day Outback Exposure tour with Tri State Safaris departs from Broken Hill and is priced from $1,380 per person twin share. Find more at, tristate.com.au.
Have you ever been to this beautiful part of Australia?
Image credit: Lucy Jones