The Family Hotel

There is something impossibly romantic about Tibooburra; there it is in the far north-western corner (Corner Country) of New South Wales. Tibooburra is 335 km north of Broken Hill, 1504 km north-west of Sydney, 900 km from Adelaide.

It seems so isolated and yet it is full of friendliness and activity.

Named after the ancient granite tors that surround the village, the goldfields of the Tibooburra region was originally known as ” The Granites” and formed part of the Albert Goldfields. Gold in Tibooburra was buried beneath deep alluvial muds and required special techniques to mine. As elsewhere on the Albert Goldfields, life was tough at “The Granites”.

Today, 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 and a caravan park and a hotel to accommodate visitors. 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 meals and fuel or undertake vehicle repairs.

There is also a marvellous Pioneer Park (often with not a blade of grass) with a wonderful sculpture of a full-size 27-foot long whaleboat perched on the top of some poles – a replica of the whaleboat Charles Sturt hauled across inland Australia. And here, on the edge of the huge Sturt National Park, you can really feel as though you are in the heart of the desert.

Tibooburra is the closest town to the magnificent Sturt National Park. Located in the north-west corner of NSW and bordering South Australia to the West and Queensland to the north, this massive park provides the visitor with a great insight to the geomorphology of outback Australia with ancient eroded mountain ranges and vast gibber plains easily illustrating the concept of the inland sea that early explorers believed covered the interior of Australia. The park also provides several vantage points to the Dingo Fence.