Pilliga Artesian Bore Baths

Pilliga is a small village 105 kilometres west of Narrabri in north-west New South Wales, at the edge of the Pilliga forest — the largest continuous native forest remaining west of Australia's Great Dividing Range. Its artesian bore baths were constructed in 1902, originally as the town's permanent water supply infrastructure, tapping Great Artesian Basin water that emerges at a steady 37°C. What began as functional civic infrastructure has, over more than a century, become the village's main drawcard: a simple, unadorned pool where locals and travellers exploring the Pilliga's box-ironbark woodlands and dark-sky stargazing sites can soak in naturally warm mineral water with little more than the surrounding bush for company.