Tag Archives: central west nsw

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.

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.

central nsw, Holiday

Hill End – Part 2

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Given that Hill End was home to 8,000 people at its height, there are quite a few buildings of note. They are a good representation of 19th Century Australian country architecture. Many are no longer in use, and the two that are, are predictably, the pub…

Hill End Village

And the general store/cafe.

Hill End Village

They both seem to do a good trade catering to the needs of the locals and visitors.

Around the village was a full complement of traditional churches that seemed to still be in operation as well.

Hill End Village

But there were also a lot of buildings that seemed to have been commercial premises at some stage of their lives but are now either empty or used for residential purposes. I wonder what they were all used for?

Ok, this building seems to be a business of some sorts, but had very reduced opening hours.