1. Visit Cameron’s Corner
This, of course, is what Corner Country is all about — the marker where three states, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia, meet. There’s not much there but its lure is almost magnetic, and the pub serves the essential cold beer.
The National Parks and Wildlife Service office in Tibooburra has an interesting enough display that includes the original marker placed at the Corner in 1880 by John Cameron, a surveyor with the NSW Lands Department.
2. Walk a bit along the dingo fence
At more than 5600 kilometres, the dingo fence is the world’s longest, stretching from Queensland’s Darling Downs to the Great Australian Bight.
It comes very close to Cameron’s Corner and runs virtually along the NSW-Queensland and NSW-South Australia borders for some 650 kilometres.
3. Take in the view of the Jump Ups
This is flat, very flat, country so it’s a surprise to come across an escarpment, known as the Jump Ups, in the eastern part of the Sturt National Park. The view of the remains of this ancient mountain range is stunning.
4. Have a cleansing ale at the Family Hotel, Tibooburra
The walls of this otherwise completely normal outback pub are lined with paintings by the likes of Clifton Pugh, Russell Drysdale and Howard William Steer. The hotel was used as a base while the artists painted the surrounding countryside and, indeed, Pugh was an absentee landlord from 1988 to 1994.
The hotel owns the cabins that are across the road which provide very comfortable accommodation.
5. Watch for wildlife as you’re travelling
It’s not quite the Serengeti Plain during the Great Migration, but the proliferation of kangaroos and emus makes for spectacular viewing as you drive the Outback roads around Tibooburra and Cameron’s Corner ... and also provides plentiful reason to take great care, especially around dawn and dusk but at just about any time of day, particularly when it’s not overly hot.
But there’s plenty else to see, too — eagles, lizards, feral goats, horses, bustards and a proliferation of many other birds such as the Major Mitchell’s cockatoo.
6. Drive to the lookout at Tibooburra
Tibooburra is the closest town of any size to Cameron’s Corner and it is speculated that its name comes from an Aboriginal word meaning ‘heap of boulders’. There’s certainly plenty of evidence for that assertion if you take a drive to the nearby lookout which provides spectacular views of the town and surrounding desert country.
7. Take a break at the Packsaddle Roadhouse
The Packsaddle Roadhouse is a handy watering and lunch stop on the Silver City Highway between Broken Hill and Tibooburra. It features an interesting range of historic — and sometimes not so historic — artefacts. I was particularly taken with the collection of well worn cockies’ hats.
8. Scratch you head at the Tool Tree
You’ll inevitably ask “Why, oh why, did they bother to do that?” but the ‘Tool Tree’ — essentially a discarded collection of spanners welded to a clothes line — and its smaller offspring, the ‘Baby Tool Tree’, do provide a talking point and a definite reason for stopping near the corner of the Silver City Highway and the White cliffs Road.
9. Grieve a little at Poole’s grave
Explorer Captain Charles Sturt was so convinced that he’d find the fabled Inland Sea that his expeditionary force contained a couple of sailors, but all he found was desert and futility. In 1854 he and his party were forced to camp for several months at waterhole they named Depot Glen.
Sturt’s second-in-command, James Poole, died shortly after the party finally left Depot Glen. He is buried nearby.
10. Spend an hour wandering around the Golden Gully Mining Site
There are plenty of historic relics on display at this quite classy reconstruction of an 1800s mining site. The explanatory plaques are well done. Best visited early morning or just before sunset, when it isn’t too hot.