Outback New South Wales, a taste of the heart of Australia

Saturday lunchtime we picked up the hire car from Sydney Kings Cross and head through the suburbs towards the Blue Mountains. The Bells Road is fine drive through the Blue Mountains, and the road up to Mudgee where we are staying is equally attractive. We are making good progress to get to the caravan park before it shuts at six, when we catch up to a police car and have to slow down to the regulatory 100 kph. Unlike in the UK, where if you are behind a police car it is likely to turn off within 10 minutes, the far greater distance between towns of any size in Australia mean you are just as likely to be following the same route a couple of hours or more. Fortunately, after about an hour, the police car pulled over to accomplish its mission, which was to scrape a dead kanga from the middle of the road. This was the first kanga road kill we had seen, and was a bit of a shock, and though it was far from the last we passed, there remained something odd about the sight.

Mudgee is a pleasant little town notable for the many surrounding vineyards. What brought us the most pleasure was that it had one of the best Indian restaurants we have been to (note that a hot vindaloo in Australia equates to a medium hot curry in the UK). Also, because it was December, we were fortunate to see some of the most fabulously garish Christmas gardens possible. We had seen some major displays elsewhere in Australia but Mudgee took the biscuit.

On Sunday we made an early start to see if we could get some miles under our belt heading out West towards the outback, road conditions being an unknown quantity to us. We passed through Dubbo and Nyngan in the morning, and reached Cobar at lunchtime. The terrain had changed from agricultural land to wilder territory, with little evidence of farming. Beyond Cobar, there is one small town, before reaching Broken Hill, over 300 km away. The terrain continues to get more arid, the trees smaller and tougher. The wildlife was sparse, although we passed some feral goats and wild emus. At one point we passed five or so dead kangas in a half-hour spell, with the massive carrion crows prewarning us of their presence. Around six o’clock we finished the journey to Broken Hill and checked into a crummy caravan park. The temperature was still baking hot and the air-con was derisory.

Broken Hill is one of the strangest towns we have visited. The town grew following the discovery of silver, tin and lead, and will continue to be mined for a few more years, and evidence of this is everywhere to be seen, from the pit heads, slag heaps machinery to the names of the main streets in the town centre, Oxide, Bromide, Sulphide, Chloride, and Kaolin Streets.

After a quick look around the town and a pizza we headed for Silverton, 25km North East, which was the film set for Mad Max Two. We passed a camel enclosure on the way but there was little to keep us so we continued to Muno Muno lookout, a further few km along. From this lay-by you can see the outback plains stretching out west and north for at least a couple of hundred miles. We arrived as the sun was touching down on the horizon. As the giant red haze sank below the horizon, the clouds glowed orange with the final light of the day, and stretched across the plain. It looked more like a science fiction film than anything we were used to on earth.

We drove back to Broken Hill slowly in the twilight, as the kangaroos and other wildlife are most active at this time. Several watched from the side of the road as we drove past, but fortunately none bounded into our path.

Early the following morning we walked up to the sculpture park outside Broken Hill, which again gave us a sense of the terrain around this part of the world. The land certainly has an ineffable power. Afterwards, we visited Pro Hart’s gallery and spent a little more time in the town. Pro Hart is a self taught local artist and was once a miner, and his works and collection were very individualistic and non-conformist, which one senses is a typical attitude out in the harsher lands of Australia, unlike the consumerist pleasure-seeking major cities and coastal resorts. By now, Broken Hill’s peculiarities had endeared the place to us, and along with the surrounding terrain it remains one of the things unique to Australia which may merit a further visit.

That afternoon we drove 200 km south and then 300 km west to Hay. The terrain became more tame, with huge farms, a few more wild emus and goats, and only a handful of dead kangas.

In the evening, we drove 20 km North from Hay to watch the sunset. This area of land must be one of the flattest you can visit, with the elevation varying less than 20 metres across 20000 km2 or so. A couple of hundred miles or more to the East, the clouds above the horizon glowed with the light reflected from the moon, whilst an equal distance to the West, where the sun was setting, a series of storm clouds could be seen releasing shafts of rain across the outback. The angle of descent, dictated by the wind blowing across the plains, could clearly be seen. The growing darkness was frequently broken by the lightning, at times by sharp forks and at others by vast areas of lighted storm clouds. As we returned to our cabin we could see the darkness and the storm heading West towards us. It would be interesting to spend more time in this area just to watch these vast meteorological changes takings place so clearly. The area is known for its amateur astrologist, and one guy out here has, over the past few years, discovered as many meteors as NASA.

The following day, leaving the flat country, we passed through Wagga Wagga and headed for the Snowy Mountains. Along the way, bump was demonstrating his formative music taste. Van Morrison, Moby, Mercury Rev and, most of all, Michael Nyman, all got him jigging along. Morcheeba, unsurprisingly, provoked no reaction. Neither did Madam Butterfly (one belting tune, loads of filler).

The Snowy Mountains are the highest range in Australia and, true to their name, we saw a small patch on the highest peaks. The drive was notable mostly for the windy roads through millions of bare trees, for the parrots and crows playing chicken in the road, and a couple of road kill wombats with rigormortis being eaten by hundreds of flies.

The following morning our drive took us from the foothills of the mountains across the undulating high country of South East New South Wales towards Canberra. The Australian capital sometimes gets a reputation for blandness, having been purpose built in the twentieth century, much like Milton Keynes. However, we thought it a pleasant and occasionally impressive place to spend time. The many war monuments along the war monument road displayed imagination and variety. The central areas were less busy and pushy than Sydney for instance. We visited the museum where we discovered how the bushfires had caused tragedy in the area in the past few years.

From Wednesday afternoon until Friday morning we stayed at Bawley Point, on the way back to Sydney, in a cabin fronting the beach. $121.50 a night is by far the most we paid to stay in Australia, but it equates to barely more than Ł50 a night and would cost three or four times as much in the UK.

Although our trip only lasted a few days and stayed within a single state, it gave a taste of the Australia that we had wanted to see. Once you have seen the key landmarks, westernised cities seem much of a muchness and fail to generate a unique spirit, but away from Australia’s busy coast where man’s encroachment is subservient to nature there is a sense of wonder unique to the environment.