 Queensland's Outback, covering an enormous 832,000 square kilometres, is tough pioneer country, steeped in the history of early explorers.
Many tourists travel the Matilda Highway and byways in search of the real Australian outback and its rich heritage. Here they discover Australia's early beginnings thanks to many significant sites and memorials dedicated to brave pioneers such as Burke and Wills, Ludwig Leichhardt, William Landsborough, John McKinlay, Sir Thomas Mitchell and Sir Augustus Gregory, among many others.
Towns, highways, roads, trees, rivers and other important sites have been memorialised after explorers and are well worth a visit. There's Burketown, the Burke river, the Mitchell Highway, the Landsborough Highway, the McKinley River, Leichhardt River and Falls, Gregory River and Downs to name a few.
Each town in the outback has its own place in Australia's history. Barcaldine was the site of the revolutionary 1891 Shearers' Strike. Visit the famous tree of knowledge, folk museum and Workers Heritage Centre.
Winton is the 'birthplace' of Australia's national airline, Qantas, and the national song, Waltzing Matilda as well as being home to the Waltzing Matilda Centre.
Longreach has an important link with the Qantas story told in the Qantas Founders Outback Museum in the original Qantas hanger.
Don't miss the Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame, a pioneer museum devoted to rural Australia's exploration, settlement and development.
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ArticlesWalk to Combo Waterhole, the very billabong that inspired the ballad penned by Banjo Patterson and adopted by Australians as their unofficial anthem. Visit the Waltzing Matilda Centre at Winton, 145 kilometres on, to learn the legend behind the song. more Rivers flow through itIt's not all dry as salt! Numerous rivers flow through the outback, most joining the Eyre River Basin. They beckon invitingly to fishers and swimmers, and include the rivers Baroo, Bullo, and the Diamantina, immortalised in the song Dusty Diamantina. Walk with dinosaurs!Imagine, Queensland's outback was once part of a great inland sea! Great fossil sites here reveal evidence of dinosaurs, mammals, birds and plants never seen elsewhere. Lark Quarry near Winton shows the world's only evidence of a dinosaur stampede. |
