The 10 Best Outback Experiences in Australia

The desert landscape around Uluru is impressive enough on its own, but the 50,000 frosted glass spheres that surround ‘The Rock’ make it even more spectacular. British artist Bruce Munro added the light installation in 2016 and the luminous bulbs will remain in place until 2020, making for a compulsory after-dark adventure in the Red Centre.

There aren’t many outback icons that are more famous than this frontier mining town in far western New South Wales. Follow the Broken Hill Heritage Walk to see the heritage architecture and classic outback streetscapes, get out of town to wander through the picturesque Living Desert Sculptures, and even visit the Mad Max Museum, a homage to the cult classic that was filmed nearby.

The Great Ocean Road might be Australia’s most famous road trip, but the Gibb is perhaps its most challenging. This epic journey winds through more than 600 kilometres of rugged terrain in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and it’s not for the faint-hearted – jump in your 4WD to tackle the gorges, plateaus, waterfalls and outback stations that make up this wild corner of the country.

Eight hours’ drive north of Adelaide lies one of Australia’s most unique destinations: the underground opal-mining town of Coober Pedy, which hides beneath the earth’s surface to escape the baking Central Australian heat. See subterranean museums, cafes and churches, and those with a ribald sense of humour will also get a giggle out of Crocodile Harry’s underground lair, one of the outback’s oddest attractions.

If you think Coober Pedy sounds unusual, wait until you see the world’s longest golf course. The Nullarbor Links spans 1,365km of barren desert crossing between Ceduna in South Australia and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, an 18-hole par 73 course crawling with kangaroos and wombats.

After you’ve played your 18 holes, you arrive in the WA Goldfields, where Australia’s largest open pit gold mine is the area’s biggest attraction – literally. The Super Pit, as it’s colloquially known, swallowed up a series of Kalgoorlie’s historic underground mines, and can be gawked at from a lookout at the end of the Golden Quest Discovery Trail.

Most horse races are held on luscious green grass, but not this one. Thousands of visitors converge on the tiny town of Birdsville 1,600 kilometres west of Brisbane on the first Saturday in September to watch nags gallop through the Simpson Desert dust, producing an event that’s the outback’s answer to the Melbourne Cup.

The outback isn’t just red dust and open road, with a string of scenic swimming holes trickling around Central Australia. The Ormiston Gorge – located within the West MacDonnell Ranges near Alice Springs – is one of the most photogenic, fringed by sandy verges and towering red stone walls.

Outback road-trippers stop for petrol at many unremarkable roadhouses, but you could never accuse this flaming pink pit stop of being boring. More than a thousand kilometres north-west of Adelaide, the Pink Roadhouse is a compulsory stop on any road trip from South Australia into the beating red heart of the continent.