This is an interesting route through remote but colourful outback New South Wales and is quite popular with 4WD travellers heading up to the
Strzelecki Track and beyond to
Innamincka. Most people begin their Corner Country tour from
Broken Hill - the region's largest centre for supplies and facilities, however the most direct and more adventurous route from eastern NSW would be to start from
Bourke and head west along the
Bourke -
Tibooburra Road via Wannaaring. This route is very susceptible to flooding and can be closed and impassable after heavy rain.
This trek note leaves
Broken Hill, and instead heads north on the Silver City Highway. This highway runs in a north-south direction close to the border of NSW and SA. It links the towns of
Wentworth, located at the confluence of the Murray and Darling Rivers, to the mining city of
Broken Hill, and the village of
Tibooburra in the remote north-west corner of NSW.
Some of the towns that lie adjacent to the Silver City Highway are
Packsaddle, which is the main stop for fuel and supplies,
Milparinka - a former mining town with an interesting bush pub and historic buildings, and
Tibooburra - a grazing town surrounded by
granite boulders. North of
Tibooburra is the large
Sturt National Park, which is a popular run out to the corner post of the three states (SA, NSW, QLD). This route can be done as a loop trip, departing and rejoining at
Tibooburra, else you can continue west past
Cameron Corner and join up with the
Strzelecki Track and head up into
Innamincka and the
Cooper Creek.
How to Use this Trek Note
- To download this information and the route file for offline use on a phone, tablet, headunit or laptop, go to the app store and purchase ExplorOz Traveller. This app enables offline navigation and mapping and will show where you are as you travel along the route. For more info see the ExplorOz Traveller webpage and the EOTopo webpage.
Environment
In the Corner Country of eastern New South Wales, mulga and whitewood typically dominate the sandplains and dunefields. In channel and flood-out areas, you will find black box, river red gum, coolibah and river cooba. Curly mallee, rosewood and belah dominate the ranges and hills, whilst bladder saltbush, black bluebush thrive on the stony plains.
In regards to fauna, there are 195 species of birds, 58 species of reptiles, and 37 species of mammals recorded within the
Broken Hill bioregion. Some of the fauna species you may see roaming the lands include: red kangaroos, eastern and western
grey kangaroos, euros, red-necked wallabies, parma wallabies and red-necked pademelons.
History
Cameron Corner is the surveyed north-west corner of NSW, located at the point where the states of NSW, QLD and SA meet. The Corner is also the north-west boundary of
Sturt National Park, which is one of NSW’s largest National Parks - at over 3100 square kilometres.
This region was first explored by Captain Charles Sturt, who in 1844 went in search of a supposed inland sea in the centre of the Australian continent.
Cameron Corner was named after New South Wales Lands Department surveyor,
John Brewer Cameron, who spent two years from 1880 marking the border between NSW and Queensland and erected a post there in September 1880. He placed a wooden marker every 1.6kms along the interstate frontier.
According to the
Brisbane Courier Mail, the sole permanent resident of the town is Bill
Mitchell, who operates the
Cameron Corner Store and a golf course. Apparently, it "is a Queensland business, with a NSW postcode and a SA telephone number."
Cameron Corner also features the world’s longest vermin fence. The 5,000 plus kilometre Dog Fence was constructed to keep roaming Dingos from the north and west out of the pastoral lands of NSW.
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