If you want a place to camp at Tiboooburra then you can’t go past the Aboriginal Land Council Camp Site at Tibooburra. What a great camp site. Hot showers and flushing toilets all in an outback setting for only $15 a night. It is an awesome spot to set up camp for a night or two. They have drinking water available and it is good, clean and tastes excellent. We drove to Tibooburra on the Silver City Highway and camped at the Aboriginal Land Council camp site after a stop at Packsaddle for lunch.

MARS Enthusiasts National Muster 2019 Crew Lined Up At Packsaddle

Today we travelled up from Menindee to Tibooburra with mates from the MARS Enthusiasts Group on the Silver City Highway. We left the Burke & Wills camp site at Lake Pamammaroo and headed in to Broken Hill. We had to call in to the Broken Hill Tyre Service 4wdsupacentre there to replace the AGM battery in the van as it had been playing up. Just a shout out to the 4wdsupacentre at Broken Hill for their excellent and very helpful service. They had a battery in stock and wheeled it out to our van for us and even disposed of our old battery for us. Great service from them and it was very much appreciated.

After fuelling up we hit the Silver City Highway and headed north. We stopped in at Packsaddle for some lunch and a few photos. Packsaddle is a great old roadhouse that has been there for over a hundred years. We all stopped in for lunch and had a look around the Packsaddle Roadhouse. Lunch was great, the food there is excellent. Fuel is available at Packsaddle so a few of us topped up before heading on.

Amanda & David Outside of Packsaddle Roadhouse

Road Conditions Broken Hill to Tibooburra

The Silver City Highway up from Packsaddle was a lot better than it was eighteen months ago. In fact almost the whole section of road between Packsaddle and Tibooburra has been tarred. There are only a few small sections of dirt left and the sections that are still dirt are currently being prepared for bitumen. I reckon that in the next few months it will be bitumen the whole way from Broken Hill to Tibooburra. It made a welcome change to the way it was when we last went up to Tibooburra from Broken Hill in May 2018.

Packsaddle To Broken Hill Road Conditions Sign

Aboriginal Land Council Camp Site at Tibooburra

What a great camp site. They have hot showers and flushing toilets all in an outback setting for only $15 a night. It really is an awesome spot to set up camp for a night or two. They have drinking water available and it is good, clean and tastes excellent. There is a walk you can do from the Aboriginal Land Council camp site. It leaves the back of the park and loops out and around and works it’s way back to aboriginal burial grounds near the main Tibooburra sign on the way in to town. At the corner where the road heads out to Cameron Corner. It’s a nice easy, interesting walk.

Supreme Getaway Caravan At Aboriginal Land Council Camp Site Tibooburra

Pleasant Evening at the Tibooburra Camp Site

We had a great evening at the Tibooburra camp site sitting around a fire and telling jokes and stories with the friends we travelled up to Tibooburra with. One of our fellow travellers had some firewood that he had brought up from Menindee. We used so we didn’t have to stop on our way to collect any. There is none available for use in and around the camp site so make sure to bring your own.

View From Our Camp Site

A Bit of Information About Tibooburra

Tibooburra is in the far northwest corner of New South Wales. Tibooburra is 335 km north of Broken Hill, 1504 km northwest of Sydney and only 900 km from Adelaide. it’s weird that it’s in NSW and yet it’s 600km closer to Adelaide than Sydney! If you look at Tibooburra on a map and at photographs of it then it seems to be pretty isolated. If you visit Tibooburra you will find that it is a fairly busy place. A lot of travellers coming and going and mine workers coming through most months of the year. It does get a lot quieter during the brutally hot summer months though.

Tibooburra gets it’s name from the ancient granite tors that surround the town. The goldfields of the Tibooburra region were originally known as “The Granites” and were a part of the Albert Goldfields. Gold in Tibooburra was buried beneath deep alluvial mud and required special techniques to mine. Like everywhere on the Albert Goldfields life was tough at “The Granites”.

Iconic Hotels

Of the two hotels The Family Hotel is our favourite, in fact it’s one of our favourite of all outback pubs we have visited. There is a post-office with banking and internet access, supermarket and cafe facilities. The Royal Flying Doctor Service visits each Tuesday for a clinic. A modern roadhouse and local stores provide meal, fuel and basic automotive spares. If you need more more comprehensive vehicle spares of any nature or are in need of a mechanic then Broken Hill is your nearest option 335km to the south.

Sturt National Park

Modern day Tibooburra is home to Sturt National Park, New South Wales police and the Tibooburra Outback School of the Air. The township has two hotels, motel rooms, cabins, caravan park, Aboriginal Land Council run campgrounds and a hostel to accommodate visitors. 

Pioneer Park Tibooburra

There is a fantastic Pioneer Park with a wonderful sculpture of a full-size 27-foot long whaleboat perched on the top of some poles. The whaleboat is a replica of one Charles Sturt hauled across inland Australia. Here on the edge of the huge Sturt National Park you feel as though you are already in the heart of the desert.

Tibooburra is the closest town to the Sturt National Park. Located in the northwest corner of NSW and bordering South Australia to the West and Queensland to the north. Sturt National Park is huge and it provides the visitor with a great insight to outback Australia with ancient eroded mountain ranges and vast gibber plains. The park also provides several vantage points where you can view and get up close to the Dingo Fence.

Things to Do in and Around Tibooburra

The Gorge Loop Road

This loops around Mt Wood and the Mount Wood Hills and covers the outdoor pastoral heritage museum, Mt Wood Homestead and shearers quarters, the Gibber and Mitchell Grass Plains, the Twelve Mile Creek Gorge, and the old pastoral remains at Torrens Bore and Horton Park Station. Wildlife such as emus, kangaroos and wedgetail eagles are commonly sighted.

The Jump-Ups Loop Road

The ancient landforms that are known as the Jump-Ups are the remains of an ancient mountain range that have been eroded down over millions of years leaving the 150m plateau and granite strewn plains which form the catchment of Connia Creek which follows southeast into the Twelve Mile creek.

Cameron Corner

The drive from Tibooburra to Cameron Corner takes the visitor through an ever changing landscape including the Waka Claypan, Fort Grey which was used as a provisions stockade by explorer Charles Sturt for his inland expeditions  You then travel on to the Cameron Corner and the worlds longest fence – the 5,000+ km Dog Fence which was constructed to keep roaming Dingos out of the north and west out of the pastoral lands of NSW.

Tibooburra Keeping Place

Located in Briscoe Street the Keeping Place features a display of local photographs, fauna and indigenous artifacts of wood and stone from the Wadigali, Wongkumara and Malyangapa tribes. It is also where you pay your camp site fees for the Aboriginal Land Council camp site. They also have arts and crafts for sale.

Tibooburra Pioneer Park

At the end of the main street is the Tibooburra Pioneer Park which was established in 1999. The main attraction in the park is a full-size whaleboat. This is a replica of the whaleboat Charles Sturt hauled across inland Australia on a wagon with the intention of using it to row around the inland sea he was expecting to discover. The original whaleboat was abandoned at Depot Glen near Milparinka – Milparinka is only about 30 minutes to the south of Tibooburra and is also well worth a visit.

Pioneer Park Tibooburra Replica Sturt Whaleboat

The Church of the Corner

This church was erected in 1963 by the Australian Inland Mission. it is now run by the Uniting Church Frontier services. It is open for use by visiting clergy by prior arrangement. It is a church available to all people of the area.

Golden Gully

Golden Gully next to Dead Horse Gully camping ground is a recreation of mining sites and methods with plaques explaining what is going on. The turnoff is located about 1 km north of Tibooburra.