Holiday, Outback NSW

Outback NSW – Nyngan

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We made our way even further west, and passed through the small town of Nyngan. The country around Nyngan has well and truly flattened out, but not yet tree-less.

The town of Nyngan is pretty compact and the main buildings surround the old railway station, which has become a museum. The chopper in front is a salute to the defence forces who rescued the entire town when it was flooded in 1990.

The most controversial attraction though, is the ‘Big Bogan’. It has lots of negative connotations, though to be fair, the local river is actually called the Bogan, and it was called that long before the term ‘bogan’ was a thing. Up to you to decide whether the Bogan is a good or bad thing for the town. What do you think about towns building big things as tourist attractions?

Holiday, Outback NSW

Outback NSW – Lightning Ridge – Part 3

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Opal mining is a hard life, as can be seen in the TV series, Outback Opal Hunters. Miners are generally a secretive lot, but travelling with a geologist (a.k.a. Hubby) has its perks as he has connections. We ended up going on a bit of a sightseeing tour in and around Lightning Ridge with one of his connections, S. He first showed us around the famous digs of Lightning Ridge (featured in my previous post). Here are some other places he showed us.

I showed you some smaller claims previously, but we were shown bigger workings as well. This claim is no longer being worked.

To see if you have any good opals, you have to sort your diggings (with the help of a cement mixer/tumbler, and then give it a good wash to get the dust off. Then you look at the rocks in the dark under UV light to see if anything glows – opals glow under UV light! Told you it wasn’t easy. Luckily, Lightning Ridge has a community wash plant, and we got to see it at work.

Miners bring their dogs out for company (and perhaps protection). If it was my dog, she’d be out chasing the wildlife and you’d never see her again.

There are other smaller localities close to Lightning Ridge that are also opal fields. We drove to the locality of Grawin, where we found that one of the local watering holes (there were several) was uniquely Australian. And their War Memorial was ‘down-to-earth’.

Holiday, Outback NSW

Outback NSW – Lightning Ridge – Part 2

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Lightning Ridge is a mining town. It is remote. It has a harsh climate. It is in ‘woop woop’ by the standards of most East Coasters. What does the land look like? A bit like this.

The mining that occurs around the town is usually done by individuals or small groups as opals can’t successfully be mined on an industrial scale. Hence there are no really enormous holes in the ground, just thousands of little ones.

Mining is usually people’s winter ‘job’, as the high summer temperatures mean that it’s too difficult to stay year-round. In summer, they run back to the coast!

Many miners live on or near their mine ‘lease’, and council regulations appear non-existent, so they are free to build what they like. Some are so imaginative that they’re now tourist attractions.

Holiday, Outback NSW

Outback NSW – Walgett and Lightning Ridge – Part 1

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We’ll continue on our December 2022 road trip and drive further north. The next town we passed through was Walgett. It didn’t have any real architectural marvels, but it was a busy, sizeable town. And it had a bit of art with a painted silo and a little art gallery.

Beyond Walgett, we drove on a very straight and flat road, and saw evidence of the Q4 2022 floods in the surrounding coutry-side.

We arrived at Lightning Ridge late in the afternoon, in time to view the sunset. Lightning Ridge is an opal mining town and proper outback country, and we’ll explore it in the following post or two.

Holiday, Outback NSW

Outback NSW – Coonamble

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About 100km up the road from Gilgandra is the town of Coonamble. It is a small agricultural town of around 2,700, grazing sheep and cattle. We visited in early December so it was decidedly hot in the middle of the day.

The town itself is home to some lovely art deco architecture.

It is also home to a sizeable First Nations population, namely the Wailwan and Gamilaroi nations.

Country towns are full of characters, and Coonamble decided to commemorate many of them on plaques all around the main street. They’re distinctly… Australian.

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Outback NSW – Gilgandra

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Let’s start our study of Outback NSW towns with Gilgandra. By definition it is a Central West town (it’s less than 70km north of Dubbo, a genuine Central West NSW town), but since it is on the road to the Outback, we’ll classify it is an outback town for this post.

Being so close to the metropolis of Dubbo (whose population is nearing 45,000) means that Gilgandra is virtually a suburb of Dubbo. It also means that any facilities it once had had been taken away, as it’s just as ‘convenient’ to go down the road an hour (which is the country equivalent of 10 minutes by city standards). It’s left many of its shop-fronts vacant – they’re relics of a by-gone era. On the plus-side, it’s close to facilities, with real estate prices that haven’t yet gone through the roof.

The town was certainly on the sleepy side when we dropped by, but was a pleasant change after the controlled chaos of Dubbo (those roundabouts are worse than Canberra’s – big call, I know, but have you ever shared a roundabout with a road-train?). 

I like the murals that were dotted around the town. They are now a feature of a lot of country towns, I noticed, and I wholly approve. The more art the better, I say! 

central nsw, Holiday

Outback NSW – On the Road

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Today I’m starting a new series of posts about our adventures in the far west of NSW. This post is from our trip in December 2022. It was warm to hot, and the previous month had brought heavy rains to this region. In this post, we were driving up the Castlereagh Highway between Gilgandra and Lightning Ridge. The landscape is very flat, with farm-land on either side. 

You can see some of the fields were still flooded, in other places it was functional enough to let the stock back on. 

We passed through a few sizeable towns – Gilgandra, Coonamble and Walgett. Some had silo art, while others even had an art gallery.

Holiday

Southern Highlands – Joadja – Part 2

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This is the second and final post of this series on my farm stay at Joadja.

The afternoon of the second day was sunny. You can see the difference in the landscape. Everything looks lush and hopeful.

I woke up early on the last morning in order to take advantage of the gentle early morning light. Being a mid-May morning, there was a little mist and a lot of dew. It’s a magical time to be out-and-about.

The sun eventually cleared the horizon, bringing about another clear morning. I think I appreciated the day a bit more knowing what has come before.

Holiday

Southern Highlands – Joadja – Part 1

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My last few posts were about the seaside, but we’re going to gradually make our way deeper in-land for awhile.

In this little series, we’re on a farm-stay in the Southern Highlands region of Joadja. These photos were taken back in May, 2022. The property we stayed at is on the Wingecarribee River, which threads itself through the region. It is a good 30-45 minutes from the nearest town (Berrima), so it’s certainly a place to getaway from it all. The stay took place over 3 days, so I got to know the many moods of the landscape. The weather does change how a place looks quite dramatically. I’m obviously using my photographers/landscape painter’s eye now…

On a sunny afternoon…

On a rainy morning…

There were lots of walks on farm roads to be had. I’ll post more rural scenes from Joadja in my next post.

Holiday

By the Seaside – Gerroa

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We’ll explore the neighbouring village of Gerroa. Historically, Gerroa has been the much smaller sibling to Gerringong, but in the last 10 years, estate developments in between the two towns mean that they’re really now joined at the hip.

Gerroa is located on the north end of Seven Mile Beach – which stretches all the way down to Shoalhaven Heads. It’s another stretch of coast that I’m very familiar with.

It is a collection of beach-side caravan parks and houses that are perched up on Black Head. Black Head itself consists of dark basalt produced by a volcano that was active in the area about 30 million years ago.

Gerroa is perfect if you just like a paddle in the surf or a really long walk along the beach.

Adventures on life's merry-go-round