10 Breathtaking Inland NSW Sceneries that Will Leave You Speechless

Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, Walcha

Photo by Josh Fotheringham on Unsplash

Wollomombi Falls is one of the most spectacular sights in Oxley Wild Rivers National Parks. With a dizzying 220m drop, the waterfall is a sight to behold. When it’s raining, you’ll be soaked with the refreshing spray as you stand on the viewing platform. Wollomombi is just one of the many breathtaking vistas in Oxley Wild Rivers National Parks, a 30-minute drive from Armidale. The park also boasts rugged mountains, deep chasms, and roaring rivers.

Warrumbungle National Park, Coonabarabran

Photo by Jamison Cameron on Unsplash

If you find yourself Down Under during the winter months, make sure to head to Warrumbungle National Park for an unforgettable experience. This Dark Sky Park offers incredible views of the night sky, including distant galaxies and the Milky Way. You can enjoy the beauty of the stars from secluded lookouts or the comfort of your sleeping bag. Be sure to visit Siding Spring Observatory to get some tips from the experts and peek through one of Australia’s biggest telescopes. The landscape of the park is as captivating as the sky, carved from millions of years of volcanic activity. Take the Grand High Tops walk to see the striking 90m-tall Breadknife formation.

Mungo National Park, Outback NSW

Mungo National Park

Mungo National Park is one of the harshest, driest landscapes in NSW, but it's teeming with life. More than 110 species of birds, 22 mammals and 62 reptiles call this vast park home. Huge mobs of red kangaroos can be seen bounding across the plains or sprawled out in the shade of the trees. Graceful emus, standing up to two metres tall, pick their way through the scrub.

Menindee Lakes, Menindee

The Menindee Lakes have been dry for many years, but following recent record-breaking rainfall, they are full to capacity. This has created a stunning aquatic landscape on the edge of the Australian desert. Bird life has also returned, with thousands of pelicans, ducks, swans, cormorants, ibis and spoonbills plying the calm waters. The lakes are a stop on the famed Darling River Run, an epic Outback road trip through the most remote parts of the state.

Wollemi National Park, Blue Mountains

Photo by Josh Fotheringham on Unsplash

Right on the edge of Australia’s largest city, there’s a dramatic wilderness where you won’t see another soul. The World Heritage-listed Wollemi National Park is a place of towering cliffs, wild rivers, deep canyons and serene forests. It’s particularly famous for its sunsets – the Pagoda Lookout near Rylstone is a great vantage point. Set off on the Greater Blue Mountains Drive through the Hawkesbury and you can be at the Colo entrance to the park in less than 90 minutes.

Fort Bourke Hill Lookout and New Cobar Open Cut Gold Mine, Cobar

People have been mining precious minerals and metals in Cobar for 150 years. It’s an industry that has literally shaped the town and the landscape around it. From the top of Fort Bourke Hill Lookout, 300m above sea level, you can peer down into the pit of the open-cut gold mine, accessed by a winding track carved straight into the rock. It will give you a illuminating look below the surface.

Gibraltar Range National Park, Glen Innes

You’ll find some of the oldest rainforest on earth in Gibraltar Range National Park, part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area in the Northern Rivers. There are plants here that remain largely unchanged from the time of the dinosaurs. Set out on a multi-day hike through the challenging hilly terrain or set up camp at Boundary Falls, the site of an old sawmill, and fall asleep to the sound of the cascading waterfall nearby.

Bald Rock National Park, Tenterfield

Uluru might get all the publicity, but NSW has its own giant rock that’s just as impressive. Just north of Tenterfield, on the Queensland border, Bald Rock is the largest granite monolith in Australia; it’s 750m long and 500m wide, with the rain-streaked dome rising more than 200m above the surrounding bushland. Bald Rock dates back almost 250 million years and served as an important meeting and trading ground for the three local Indigenous tribes, the Jukambal, Bundjalung and Kamilleroi. Take the challenging walk to the summit for a spectacular view.

Lake Copeton, Inverell

Covering 46 square kilometres and nearly three times the capacity of Sydney Harbour, Lake Copeton is one of the largest inland dams in NSW. Set in the Gwydir Valley, around half an hour from Inverell, the lake is full for the 2022 season, making it a holiday playground. Fishing, sailing, waterskiing, jet skiing, canoeing and swimming are available on the water, with bushwalks, camping and picnic spots around the edge. Make sure to walk across the top of the 113m-high dam wall.

Stonehenge Recreation Reserve, Glen Innes

The New England High Country of northwest NSW is a remarkably rocky place. Outside Glen Innes, a large flat field is scattered with a huge collection of granite boulders and outcrops, some over five metres high. Though they are the product of millennia of erosion, they look more like they have been carefully stacked in place – and so they were given the name Stonehenge. When seen from above, the rock formations have been said to resemble a cemetery or even a village in ruins.