Monthly Archives: May 2024

central nsw, Holiday

Riverina – Temora

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I’m starting a new series about the towns around the ‘Riverina’ area of NSW (and into Victoria as well). These towns run from the Central West into the far South West of the state and are located next to the big rivers of NSW – the Murray, the Darling, the Murrumbidgee, and the Lachlan, among others. I haven’t travelled to all the major towns that span along these rivers, but on a trip that Hubby and I took in August 2023 we drove through a few of them.

We’re starting off in the North-East corner of the region, in the medium-sized town of Temora. Temora is another town that was founded in the Gold Rush of the mid 19th Century. Once the rush eased, it became an agricultural centre (for grain and wool). Being a mid-sized agricultural town, the town’s buildings are relatively modest, and seem to have been built pre-World War II.

An unusual tourist attraction was the Temora Aviation Museum just out of town. It contained heritage military planes from World War II and Vietnam War. It’s actually someone’s private collection, and all the planes in the hanger are in working order. Not being an airplane geek, I don’t really know the details of the planes that I saw, but there was good signage provided, so I learned quite a bit that day.

Outback NSW

Outback NSW – Cobar

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Cobar was our final stop on our December 2022 drive. It is 130km west of Nyngan (in the previous post), 300km west of Dubbo, and 700km north-west of Sydney. That means, it’s very far away from anything that resembles the ‘big smoke’. This is still in the area of the Wangaaypuwan people, whose lands start at Nyngan and stretches west until Ivanhoe.

Cobar was founded on mining, and the industry still rules the roost. You can see evidence of mining all over the place, from the town’s introduction, to the lookout at Fort Bourke Hill over the Peak Gold Mine. It’s nowhere near the size of Kalgoorlie’s Super Pit but it’s big enough for me.

Cobar has much in common with its big sister, Broken Hill, 450km west, in terms of having mining at its core. However, Cobar has always been on the smaller side, its population currently being at around 3,400. Broken Hill meanwhile is much larger at over 17,000, and in the 1950s and 1960s it was over 30,000!

Being a smaller town, Cobar’s architecture is on a more modest scale. There was some nice wrought-iron work on its shops and pubs, and standalone buildings (like the train station that doesn’t receive anymore trains, and the petrol station) that wouldn’t look out of place in an American Western.

Next time, I’ll be venturing to more regional NSW towns, this time heading south-west of Sydney.