Northwest And Back O’ Bourke

Northwest And Back O’ Bourke
The empty stretches of northwest and far west New South Wales couldn’t be more antithetical to the state’s urbane capital. Although it encompasses the watershed of the Murray and Darling Rivers, the continent’s largest river system, the region’s arid climate has discouraged widespread settlement. So remote is the image Bourke (pro¬nounced “Burke�) evokes in the minds of Sydney-siders, that dubbing the state’s out-hack as “back o’ Bourke� is tantamount to declaring it the end of the earth. Cotton agriculture supports a modest economy, bolstered by the lead and silver mines at Bro¬ken Hill. Sprinkled across this lesser-known half of New South Wales are some of Aus¬tralia’s most remote national parks, including Lake Mungo, which has yielded evidence of human occupation in Australia many tens of thousands of years ago.