Barrier Highway

Introducing Barrier Highway

The Barrier Hwy is the main sealed route in the state’s west, heading from Nyngan 594km through to Broken Hill. It’s an alternative route to Adelaide and the most direct route between Sydney and Western Australia.

Cobar is a bustling mining town with a productive copper mine. It’s littered with interesting buildings, including the splendid Great Western Hotel (1898), with its enormous iron-lace veranda.

In the Great Cobar Heritage Centre, the Cobar Museum (adult/child/family $7/5/15; 8.30am-5pm) has sophisticated displays on the environment, local Aboriginal life and the early Europeans.

The Town & Country Motor Inn (02-6836 1244; 52 Marshall St; s/d from $79/90; ) has smart and crisply clean rooms behind a treed garden, and you can walk across the courtyard to Giovanni’s (mains $23 to $28; open for dinner Monday to Saturday) – make sure you try the rack of lamb.

About 32km north of the Barrier Hwy (signposted), Mt Grenfell Historic Site protects well-preserved and brilliantly coloured Aboriginal rock art in several caves along a watered gully, an important place for its Aboriginal owners, the Ngiyampaa Wangaaypuwan people. For information, contact the NPWS (02-6836 2692) or the Cobar Aboriginal Lands Council (02-6836 1144).

There are few stranger places in Australia than the tiny opal-mining town of White Cliffs, located about 91km northwest of Wilcannia. Surrounded by some of the harshest country the outback has to offer, many residents have had to move underground to escape the heat. You can inspect some of their homes with Parkers’ Dug-Out Home Tours (08-8091 6635; adult/child $5/free; 10am-4pm). You can also try fossicking for opals around the old diggings, but watch the kids around those deep, unfenced holes.

Simmering in the sun, White Cliffs Opal ­Pioneer Reserve (08-8091 6649; powered sites $9.50) has sites on flat dusty earth, but why not do as the locals do and stay at White Cliffs Underground Motel (08-8091 6677; www.undergroundmotel.com.au; s/d $79/99; ). Custom built with a tunnelling machine, it has wide corridors, a lovely dining room (three-course set-menu dinner $35), and delightfully comfortable silent rooms. Claustrophobics can stay in the two above-ground rooms.

Last updated: Feb 17, 2009