Twelve sculptors from five continents carved their stories into a desert hilltop and left them there for the outback to weather.
About The Living Desert
The Living Desert Sculpture Symposium was held in 1993, bringing together artists from diverse cultures to create works in local sandstone. The reserve itself was established to protect the arid landscape around Broken Hill, a mining town founded in 1883 on one of the world's largest zinc-lead-silver deposits.
About The Living Desert
The Living Desert is a 2,400-hectare nature reserve on the outskirts of Broken Hill in far western New South Wales, best known for its Sculpture Symposium: twelve sandstone sculptures carved into the hilltop by artists from around the world in 1993. The sculptures sit on a ridge overlooking the red desert plains that extend to the horizon in every direction.
“The sculptures sit on a ridge overlooking the red desert plains that extend to the horizon in every direction.”
The Living Desert, Australia
Art at the Edge of the Outback
In 1993, Broken Hill invited twelve sculptors from countries including Mexico, Georgia, Syria, the Maori community of New Zealand and the local Barkindji Aboriginal people to carve sculptures from Broken Hill's sandstone on a ridge in the desert. The result is a permanent open-air gallery at the edge of the Australian outback, with each work drawing on the artist's own cultural traditions and responding to the landscape. The sculptures have weathered over three decades, acquiring lichen and softened edges that blend them further into the terrain. The reserve also contains arid-adapted flora and fauna, including euros, emus and red kangaroos. The ridge is best visited at sunrise or sunset, when the low light turns the sandstone golden and the flat desert below glows red. Broken Hill itself is a remote mining town closer to Adelaide than to Sydney, and the drive through the semi-arid plains is part of the experience.
The Experience
You drive a dirt track to the ridge and walk among the sculptures on the bare hilltop. The wind is constant and the view is unbroken desert in every direction. Each sculpture carries a plaque explaining its cultural origin. At sunset, the sandstone glows golden against a red-earth horizon. Below the ridge, the reserve has walking tracks through mulga scrub where euros and emus are common.
Why It Matters
The Sculpture Symposium is one of the most unusual art installations in Australia, placing works from diverse world cultures in a remote outback landscape. It demonstrates the capacity of art to connect radically different traditions through a shared environment.
Why Visit
Twelve international sandstone sculptures on a hilltop in the New South Wales outback, glowing at sunset over red desert plains outside Broken Hill.
Insider Tips
- 1
Visit at sunrise or sunset for the best light on the sculptures.
- 2
Broken Hill is 12 hours from Sydney but only 5 from Adelaide.
- 3
Check the dirt road condition after rain before driving up.
