Before leaving Australia, I wanted to see the famous Australian Outback. I managed to plan a short three day trip with friends during a break in my final exams. We went to a mining town called Broken Hill in New South Wales.
The drive was about six hours and as we drove farther away from the city, the trees starting disappearing and being replaced with saltbushes and shorter native trees.
Most stores were closed by the time we got into town, so we decided to drive a few kilometers outside the town to go stargazing. The view of the stars and the Milky Way was incredibly clear, due to the lack of light pollution. What surprised me most was the silence. I couldn’t hear any cars, animals, or even insects. The feeling of isolation that the Outback can instill in people is really powerful and it makes sense why most Australians tend to live in cities on the coast.
On our second day in the Outback, we started off by driving to see the Living Sculpture Garden. The sculpture garden was created in 1993 by a group of artists from around the world. It is comprised of twelve sandstone sculptures that each tell a story. Some were about the artists’ lives and some drew from Aboriginal stories.
The next place we went was Kinchega National Park, about an hour and half away from Broken Hill. Kinchega National Park was home to one of the biggest wool shearing operations on this side of Australia. We were able to walk through the historic woolshed and shearers’ quarters. We learned that the closest town, Menindee, would have been about four hours away by horse and cart. Most of the lakes and rivers that we passed were completely dried up due to the years of drought affecting the area.
After we left Kinchega, we drove to Silverton, which has a population of 60 people. According to a travel brochure, most of the buildings in Silverton were moved to Broken Hill when ore deposits were found near Broken Hill. It was simply cheaper to move entire buildings from Silverton to Broken Hill, than to transport new building materials from the coastal cities to the Outback.
We had dinner at the historic Silverton Hotel, which was a filming location for Mad Max 2. The third day was spent driving back to Adelaide, though we did stop for pictures on the way. Visiting the Outback was a really cool experience and not one to miss out on.