Broken Hill – Australia’s longest-operating mining town – is anything but shy. The 17,000-person outback town was the key filming location for the iconic 1994 Australian movie Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and that colourful, flamboyant energy lives on in the wide, sun-soaked streets. As well as the famous Palace Hotel, the vibrant town is home to Australia’s largest regional art gallery, a magical outdoor sculpture park, an incredible fine dining restaurant dedicated to celebrating native ingredients and a thriving pub scene. And it turns out, Broken Hill is also home to one of the best under-the-radar natural wonders worth the road-trip in the whole of Australia.
You can check out our full guide to Broken Hill here, and find out why one Time Out writer thinks every NSW resident should add it to their bucket list.
While everyone has their own idea of a ‘hidden gem’, the crew at Mitsubishi Motors crunched the numbers to find the real deal. They sorted through more than 50,000 Aussie attractions on TripAdvisor, filtering out the big-ticket spots, before landing on a top 20 list of secret natural hotspots – all with high ratings, but barely any online searches.
It’s no secret Aussies love chasing waterfalls, so we're not surprised that a hidden waterfall, Gunlom Falls (a stunning waterfall in Kakadu National Park), claims the title of Australia’s top hidden gem. But Broken Hill’s Daydream Mine Mine – a historic silver mine on the outskirts of the NSW town – is a more surprising addition to the list. Here, visitors can explore subterranean tunnels where the silver miners of the 1880s (mainly hailing from Cornwall in the south of England) worked. Although the tunnels themselves were man-made, the mine has been counted as a natural wonder in this study due to the natural rock formations, and we’re not here to argue. Although we're of the belief that NSW is home to many of the country's most spectacular natural wonders, Broken Hill's Daydream Mine was the only NSW spot to make the list, ranking at number 12 on the list of 20.
You can explore the full list of Australia’s best little-known natural wonders worth the road trip here or check out the summary below.
These are the 20 best secret natural wonders in Australia worth road tripping for
- Gunlom Falls, NT
- Mount Coot-tha Summit Lookout, QLD
- Seventy-Five Mile Beach, QLD
- St Columba Falls, TAS
- Grassy Hill, QLD
- Kelly’s Knob Lookout, WA
- Guide Falls, TAS
- Hamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve, WA
- Fraser Avenue Lookout, WA
- The Nut State Reserve, TAS
- Chillagoe-Mungana Caves, QLD
- Day Dream Mine, NSW
- Thunder Point Coastal Reserve, VIC
- Undara Lava Tubes, QLD
- Woolshed Waterfalls, VIC
- Coombabah Lakelands, QLD
- Crystal Cave Yanchep, WA
- Cutta Cutta Caves, NT
- Coral Bay Beach, WA
- Mount Charlotte Lookout, WA
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