Tracks

Richard and Deirdre Baum are standing at the top of their olive farm Laharum Grove. Behind them, the cliffs of the northern Grampians rise dramatically. In front of them, neat rows of about 11,000...

The wind rips into tussock grass at the edge of the cliffs, fanning and whipping the clumps of long narrow blades furiously. Fluffy white clouds rush across the sky. A four- to five-metre swell...

Central western New South Wales’ Castlereagh is one of Australia’s iconic rivers, just as much a part of Australian folklore as the Diamantina, Burdekin or Barcoo. Rising in the soft...

 Station owner and sheep farmer David Elliot stands on a heap of dirt at the rim of a shallow dig on his property “Belmont”. The 18,200-hectare station of black soil and open downs...

Alice Springs doesn’t fade in the rearview mirror, it blinks out behind the mountains that define the southern edge of the town like monumental ramparts. The gap between the two distinct...

This is a place where the outback yields to the ocean, but not without a fight. Red and raw, the earth grasps at the coast, only to fall off cliffs or somersault into a beach of windswept dunes....

Kateri Cowley leans gently forward in the saddle and eases her horse into the cold, gin-clear water of Alberta’s Kananaskis River. “Just keep ’em pointed upstream and watch out for...

A soft curse rolls across the sand and wildflowers on the eastern edge of the Simpson Desert. This may sound somewhat incongruous, given the peace and beauty of the surrounds, but then it is the...

With long grey hair spilling over the collar of his flannelette shirt and a battered bush hat shading a handsome Aboriginal face, William Marranya, chief spear-maker at the Northern Territory...

Looking into the evening sky, above some of the most arid mountains in the northern Flinders Ranges, ‘Stony’ Steiner, the operator of Warraweena Conservation Park, points his stubby...

A journey from the beautiful blues of Western Australia's Shark Bay to the contrasting intense reds of central Australia is an esoteric 2500-kilometre journey that’s best done along some of...

In 1857 the Deputy Surveyor-General for South Australia George Woodroffe Goyder was sent north to check on some geographical discoveries made by Benjamin Babbage, the Government Assayer. Unseasonable...

Motorists in a hurry to get between Ceduna and Port Augusta will take National Route 1 (the Eyre Highway) across the northern part of the Eyre Peninsula. But if time isn’t a problem the coastal...

The Nullarbor is a land of superlatives; everything is big even if you leave out the Big Galah at Kimba and the Big Kangaroo at the Border Village. It’s not the manmade things that define...

In 1885, the quickest way to travel from Adelaide to the new mines around Silverton and Broken Hill – both just across the border in New South Wales – was to take the train to Terowie,...

Meekatharra is an outback town at the crossroads, literally. Its location – 765 kilometres north-east of Perth on the Great Northern Highway – sees to that. From the west the Goldfields...

Named after hapless explorer Robert O’Hara Burke, Queensland’s Burke Developmental Road (BDR) unfolds like the pages of a dry, dusty book; each chapter monotonously similar but subtly...

Sitting astride the Great Northern Highway, Meekatharra retains a gritty determination from its goldfields origins. Though not the place it once was, the townspeople believe that, in the future,...

Looking east from the top of a big red dune, all there is to see is a featureless plain of rust-stained gibbers stretching away to be lost in the shimmering distance. The only sign of animal life is...

It’s a long way to anywhere when you’re travelling along the Tanami Track. Although it is the most direct route between the Kimberley and Central Australia, it is a lonely and isolated...

Someone once said, “the longest journey starts with but a single step”. Those words could well have great meaning on a trip across the Great Central Road. It’s 1048 kilometres from...

Winton, in western Queensland, is an unofficial outback crossroad. It is the end of the rail line in the west and the place where many of the cattle from further out are trucked in for shipment...