Meeting a cast of characters inside the White Cliffs hotel

There’s something wild and untameable about Australian opal mining towns - most having the gritty, lawless feel of a Clint Eastwood western. White Cliffs, in far-west NSW, is no exception.

There’s something wild and untameable about Australian opal mining towns.

To some degree they have the gritty, lawless feel of a Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood western, inhabited by hard-bitten mining-men who’ve chanced it all to claim their fortune from the ground, all of whom have wild tales to tell about their mysterious pasts.

They are somewhat jarring communities of disparate, complex characters who have chosen to live underground in labyrinthine homes hewn through solid rock.

This story is part of News Corp’s Bush Summit series celebrating rural and regional Australia and championing the issues that matter most to those living in the bush. You can read all of our coverage here.

The far-western NSW town of White Cliffs some 250 km northeast of Broken Hill is no exception, founded in the late 1800s when a member of a party of kangaroo shooters accidentally stumbled upon a brightly coloured gemstone which was confirmed by a jeweller as opal - and the mining has not stopped ever since.

Aerial photograph of the White Cliffs opal fields. Picture: Toby Zerna

White Cliffs is a visually confronting place with reportedly more than 50,000 abandoned mineshafts scattered throughout a bleak, red-dirt lunar-landscape pockmarked by countless craters discarded by generations of treasure-fuelled miners.

Two distinct inhabited hills riddled with subterranean homes divide the town, between which lies the local watering hole The White Cliffs Hotel which is Mission Control for information about everything that goes on in the here.

On entering the pub I was astonished to discover hanging on the wall, a cartoon I’d drawn in The Daily Telegraph some thirty years ago of the White Cliffs Hotel when the blast-furnace summer temperature reached a shocking 50 degrees.

Indeed, the summertime temperatures out here can be lethal which is why the residents tunnel

underground to live where the temperatures remain at a constant 22 degrees.

White Cliffs hotel owners Matt Young and Sarah Ker celebrate with a beer after their watering hole was recently named Best Bush Pub at the NSW Australian Hotels Association awards night. Picture: Toby Zerna

Matt ‘The Hat’ Young is the pub’s proprietor and is steadily pulling beers from behind the bar - he met his wife Sarah in this very pub a few years ago and together, the pair then decided to buy the hotel and have given it a whirlwind rejuvenation - so much so in October 2023 they won the Australian Hotel Awards Best Bush Pub.

“I’ve been to Sydney three times now,” Matt tells me of his and Sarah’s journey to the big smoke to accept their award.

Matt - originally a sheep and cattleman rather than a miner - has never run a pub before but soon discovered the urgent need to acquire new skills.

“I’ve been in pubs of course but always on the other side of the bar,” he tells me from beneath an enormous Stetson-like hat.

“But I’ve had to learn a few new things - I learned how to send emails about a month ago - I can send and reply.”

Indeed the pub’s cast of fascinating nightly regulars sitting around ‘The Table of Knowledge’ all have unique stories they’re prepared to divulge after the second beer.

Max, a gregarious and handsome big bloke - and White Cliff’s only council employee - lets it slip that in a previous life he’d been a male stripper with the male strip-show Manpower along with Jamie Durie.

Another at the table had been a senior drug and homicide detective - and then of course there is the indefatigable 77 year-old Enid Black who is not only a volunteer Ambulance officer, she is also the town’s only paid lifeguard at the swimming pool.

White Cliffs local Enid Black has been an ambulance volunteer for 19 years. Picture: Toby Zerna

“I drive the ambulance, long distances really” she says of her role as a volunteer ambo, singing the praises of the Royal Flying Doctor Service with whom she works alongside.

Indeed this unique Australian institution is regularly flying in to far flung country outposts like White Cliffs to conduct vital health clinics for the locals.

“The RFDS come out for the clinic once a week and they do the lot,” Enid says of their vital

importance to those surviving in the outback, where emergencies can be so different to

those in the cities - including quad bike accidents, snake bites, floods, suicides.

“They’re on call if there’s a serious accident and if we have someone who needs to be flown out for help, 35 minutes later we have an aircraft here,” she says.

And as for her role as the White Cliffs’ only lifeguard?

“I’m pretty good” Enid smiles.

“I’ve been doing it for 19 years and I haven’t lost a kid yet.”

Originally published as Meeting a cast of characters inside the White Cliffs hotel