New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory Tourism Photo Gallery NSW/ACT Australia

A Kangaroo in the Australian NSW Outback - Sturt National Park New South Wales Australia.

Outback New South Wales is where visitors come face to face with the vast dry brown landscape that makes up most of Australia. Here is where the spirit of the early pioneers was tested as they flocked to mine the silver, gold and diamonds in the rugged outback soil.

The Outback NSW mining towns of Cobar, still a frontier town for gold and silver mining and Broken Hill which has the world's richest deposits of silver, lead and zinc were founded by immigrants who came looking for wealth in the mid 19th century. At Lightening Ridge and White Cliffs people still live in under-ground homes to escape the heat while they mine white opals.

Bourke 800km north west of Sydney, was once a major river port as was Menindee and nearby Brewarrina has an excellent Aboriginal Cultural Museum.

In the Outback of NSW it is also not unusual to see mobs of kangaroos and emus running across the Mundi Mundi Plains at sunset and flocks of Ibis on the Menindee Lakes. Cattle and sheep properties consist of vast acres of land for this is where "distance" is relative and your nearest neighbour could be hundreds of kilometres away.