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4 bars; heated outdoor pool; 3 lit tennis courts; golf course nearby; Jacuzzi; sauna; tour desk; massage; room
service (winter only); coin-op laundry; nonsmoking rooms. In room: TV/VCR w/in-house movies, minibar,
coffeemaker, hair dryer.
7 Outback New South Wales
The Outback is a powerful Australian image. Hot, dusty, and prone to flies, it
can also be a romantic place where wedge-tailed eagles float in the shimmering
heat as you spin in a circle, tracing the unbroken horizon. If you drive out here,
you have to be constantly on the lookout for emus, large flightless birds that dart
across roads open-beaked and wide-eyed. When you turn off the car engine, it's
so quiet you can hear the scales of a sleepy lizard, as long as your forearm, scrap-
ing the rumpled track as it turns to taste the air with its long, blue tongue.
The scenery is a huge canvas with a restricted palette: blood red for the dirt,
straw yellow for the blotches of Mitchell grass, a searing blue for the surreally large
sky. There is room to be yourself in the Outback, and you'll soon find that per-
sonalities often tilt toward the eccentric. It's a hardworking place, too, where min-
ers, and sheep and cattle farmers try to eke out a living in Australia's hard center.
BROKEN HILL
1,157km (717 miles) W of Sydney; 508km (315 miles) NE of Adelaide
At heart, Broken Hill—or “Silver City” as it's been nicknamed—is still very
much a hardworking, hard-drinking mining town. Its beginnings date back to
1883 when the trained eye of a boundary rider named Charles Rasp noticed
something odd about the craggy rock outcrops at a place called the Broken Hill.
Today, the city's main drag, Argent Street, bristles with finely crafted colonial
mansions, heritage homes, hotels, and public buildings. Look deeper and you
see the town's quirkiness. Around one corner you'll find the radio station built
to resemble a giant wireless set with round knobs for windows, and around
another the headquarters of the Housewives Association, which ruled the town
with an iron apron for generations. Then there's the Palace Hotel—made
famous in the movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert —with its
high painted walls and a mural of Botticelli's Birth of Venus on the ceiling two
flights up.
Traditionally a hard-drinking but religious town, Broken Hill has 23 pubs
(down from 73 in its heyday) and plenty of churches, as well as a Catholic cathe-
dral, a synagogue, and a mosque to serve its 21,000 inhabitants.
ESSENTIALS
GETTING THERE By Car Take the Great Western Highway from Sydney
to Dubbo, then the Mitchell Highway to the Barrier Highway, which will take you
to Broken Hill. Southern Australian Airlines (book through Qantas, & 13 13
13 in Australia) also connects Broken Hill to Adelaide, Melbourne, and Mildura.
The Indian Pacific train stops here on its way to Perth twice a week. The fare
from Sydney is A$415 (US$270) for adults and A$283 (US$184) for children
in a first-class sleeper, A$329 (US$214) for adults and A$198 (US$129) for
children in an economy sleeper, and A$117 (US$76) for adults and A$53
(US$34) for children in an economy seat. Call Great Southern Railways
( & 08/8213 4530 ) for more information and bookings, or check out the
timetables and fares on their website (www.gsr.com.au).
Greyhound Pioneer ( & 13 20 30 in Australia; www.greyhound.com.au)
runs buses from Adelaide for A$58 (US$38); the trip takes 7 hours. The 16-
hour trip from Sydney costs from A$93 (US$60).
 
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