Frommer's Australia from $50 a Day 13th Edition - To Parent Directory

OUTBACK NEW SOUTH WALES 209
GETTING AROUND Silver City Tours, 380 Argent St. (& 08/80873144),
conducts tours of the city and surrounding Outback. City tours take around 4
hours and cost A$45 (US$26) for adults and A$20 (US$13) for children. They
also offer a range of other tours of the area.
Broken Hill Corner Country Adventure Tours (& 08/8087 5142; www.
cornercountryadventure.com.au) operates several small group tours into the
desert from Broken Hill, staying in rural properties and bush pubs. The regular
4-day/3-night Corner Country Tour takes in a sheep station, White Cliffs,
Mootwingee, and the red-sand Sturt National Park. It costs A$850 (US$552)
all-inclusive. Other offerings include a 5-day trip to the Flinders Ranges
and Lake Eyre—usually a vast dry bowl of clay, which sometimes floods—for
A$1,235 (US$803); and an 8-day Birdsville and Outback tour, May through
October, stopping off at the very impressive red sand dunes on the edge of the
Simpson Desert, as well as the one-camel bush towns of Birdsville, Marree, and
Innamincka in South Australia. This costs A$1,790 (US$1,163).
Another recommended small group tour operator, Goanna Safari (& 08/
8087 6057; www.goanna-safari.com.au), offers personalized tours of the Outback
from Broken Hill, and a range of regular camping (with good camp beds
and cooking fires) or accommodated tours. Among them is a 3-day/2-night trip
to Mootwingee, White Cliffs, and Menidee Lakes, where giant dams on the
Darling River bristle with the half-drowned skeletons of gum trees and flutter
with numerous species of wading birds, pelicans, and ducks. This trip costs
A$656 camping and A$694 (US$450) accommodated. Also on the agenda is a
3-day trip to Minindee, Kinchega National Park, and Lake Mungo, a dry lake
famous for the 45,000-year-old skeletons and artifacts discovered here, as well as
for a semicircle of huge sand dunes and shimmering white cliffs known as the
Walls of China. This costs A$582 (US$378) camping and A$694 (US$452)
accommodated.
Hertz (& 08/8087 2719; fax 08/8087 4838) rents 4WD vehicles suitable for
exploring the area.
EXPLORING THE TOWN: GALLERIES, A MINE TOUR
& THE WORLD’S LARGEST SCHOOLROOM
With the largest regional public gallery in New South Wales and 27 private galleries,
Broken Hill has more places per capita to see art than anywhere else in
Australia. The Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery, Chloride Street, between
Blende and Beryl streets (& 08/8088 5491), houses an extensive collection of
Australian colonial and Impressionist works. Look for the Silver Tree, a sculpture
created out of the pure silver mined from beneath Broken Hill. This is also a
good place to see works by the “Brushmen of the Bush,” a well-known group of
artists, including Pro Hart, Jack Absalom, Eric Minchin, and Hugh Schultz,
who spend many hours sitting around campfires in the bush trying to capture
its essence in paint. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 10am to
5pm, and Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 5pm. Admission is A$3 (US$1.95)
for adults, A$2 (US$1.30) for children, and A$6 (US$3.90) for families.
Other galleries worth visiting around town include Absalom’s Gallery, 638
Chapple St. (& 08/8087 5881), and the Pro Hart Gallery, 108 Wyman St.
(& 08/8087 2441). All are open daily. Pro Hart’s gallery is really worth a look.
Apart from his own works—including works based on incidents and scenes
relating to Broken Hill—his gallery is crammed with everything from a basrelief
of Salvador Dalí to a landscape by Claude Monet.