Carnarvon Gorge
A 20km sandstone gorge system with permanent water, ancient cycads and some of Australia's most significant Aboriginal rock art.
Purnululu National Park
Banded orange-and-black sandstone domes in the East Kimberley — a UNESCO World Heritage geological landform reached by 53km of rough, high-clearance 4WD track.
Flinders Ranges
A 600-million-year-old mountain range with a natural amphitheatre at its heart, dark skies rated among the best on Earth, and yellow-footed rock-wallabies clinging to gorge walls few travellers ever see.
Karijini National Park
Gorges cut into rock 2.5 billion years old, in WA's second-largest national park — crystal-clear swimming holes waiting at the bottom of waterfalls most visitors never reach.
Wilsons Promontory
Mainland Australia's southernmost point — granite peaks, beaches minutes from camp, and more than half of Victoria's bird species sharing one unspoilt peninsula.
Freycinet National Park
Tasmania's oldest national park, where pink granite peaks 400 million years in the making frame the postcard curve of Wineglass Bay.
Kakadu National Park
Australia's second-largest national park, and one of the few places on Earth listed by UNESCO for both nature and culture — rock art up to 20,000 years old beside wetlands alive with wildlife.
Warrumbungle National Park
Australia's first Dark Sky Park, where a 90-metre volcanic spire called the Breadknife rises over a jagged skyline of ancient eroded volcano remnants.
Bungonia National Park
Known as the adventure capital of the Southern Tablelands — a limestone slot canyon, around 200 wild caves, and a gorge deep enough that the lookout is called The Lookdown.
Wallaman Falls
Australia's highest single-drop waterfall — 268 metres, at the end of a sealed road from Ingham — inside the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area.
Porcupine Gorge
A sandstone canyon that opens straight out of flat outback savanna north of Hughenden, with permanent waterholes at the base — Queensland's mini Grand Canyon.
Capertee Valley
Escarpment country west of the Blue Mountains, and one of the last strongholds of the critically endangered regent honeyeater — with almost none of the Blue Mountains' crowds or infrastructure.
Bunya Mountains
Ancient bunya pine rainforest on a cool 1,100-metre plateau, three hours from Brisbane, with wallabies grazing the campground at dusk.
Eungella
One of Australia's most reliable places to see a wild platypus, from viewing platforms a short walk from the car park, an hour west of Mackay.
Main Range
Rugged Gondwana rainforest and volcanic ridgeline in the Scenic Rim, ninety minutes from Brisbane — not the alpine track of the same name in NSW's Kosciuszko National Park.
Conondale
Turquoise rock pools and cascades on Booloumba Creek in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, reached by a 4WD-only creek-crossing road that keeps it quieter than the region's better-known falls.
Wooroonooran
Josephine Falls' natural rock waterslide, a canopy skywalk, and the two-day trek up Queensland's highest peak — four very different sides of the same Wet Tropics park south of Cairns.
Mount Hypipamee
A near-bottomless volcanic crater lake on the Atherton Tablelands, viewed from a fenced platform at the end of a short rainforest walk.
Kroombit Tops
A remote Central Queensland tableland where a WWII bomber wreck sits in rainforest home to a critically endangered frog found nowhere else on Earth.
Conway
A walk-in coral beach with Whitsunday Passage island views, ten minutes from Airlie Beach and entirely free — no boat charter required.
Mount Walsh
A tough, largely unmarked granite summit scramble near Biggenden, plus the Utopia Rock Pools swimming holes — a quiet North Burnett park most visitors have never heard of.
Paluma Range
Misty rainforest waterfalls, granite swimming holes and a cool highland village — three very different stops within a couple of hours of Townsville.
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