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Beyond the Great Dividing Range the sky opens up over tough country that's both relentless and beautiful. Travellers come for the exotic and intimate Australian experience, their restlessness tamed by the sheer size of the place, its luminous colours and its silence. It's a place that echoes with Indigenous stories down through the ages, and tales from Burke and Wills to Waltzing Matilda. Towns like Winton, Longreach and Birdsville in particular capture the essence of this vast place.
In the dry season, endless blue skies hover over stony deserts, matched only by the brilliant velvety clarity of the Milky Way at night. It's a long way between drinks out here, but it's well worth the drive.
These are our favorite local haunts, touristy spots, and hidden gems throughout Outback Queensland.
National Park
The waterless Simpson Desert occupies a massive 200,000 sq km of central Australia and stretches across the Queensland, Northern Territory and South Australia (SA) borders. The Queensland section, in the state’s far southwestern corner, is protected as the 10,000-sq-km Munga-Thirri National Park, and is a remote, arid landscape of high, red sand dunes, spinifex and cane grass. For park information, stop by the park office in Birdsville.
Museum
Qantas Founders Outback Museum houses a life-size replica of an Avro 504K, the first aircraft owned by the fledgling airline. Interactive multimedia and working displays tell the history of Qantas. Next door the original 1921 Qantas hangar houses a mint-condition DH-61. Towering over everything outside is a bright and shiny retired 1979 Boeing 747-200B Jumbo. The tour of the Jumbo Jet and nearby Boeing 707 is fascinating, and you can do a wing-walk with safety harness (bookings essential).
Historic Site
Combo Waterhole, 132km northwest of Winton and 13km south of Kynuna, is widely believed to be the place that inspired Banjo Paterson's famous bush ballad, Waltzing Matilda. It took on a whole new meaning when it captured the attention of Paterson when he visited in the 1890s. It was on a visit to nearby Dagworth Station Homestead, possibly in January 1895, that Paterson began composing the ballad with Christina MacPherson, who composed the tune. It was first performed in Winton's North Gregory Hotel in April of the same year.
Museum
Richmond's undisputed highlight is this museum and visitor centre, housing Australia's best collection of marine fossils, most found by local landholders. Pride of place goes to an almost complete 4.25m pliosaur skeleton – one of Australia's best-preserved vertebrate fossils – and to a partial skeleton of Kronosaurus queenslandicus, the largest known marine reptile to have lived here. Other complete fossils include prehistoric turtles and sharks. There's also a fossil preparation laboratory where you can sometimes see resident palaeontologists at work.
Museum
This outstanding dinosaur fossil museum, about 15km east of Winton, is set atop a rugged plateau known as the 'Jump Up'. There are two sides to the architecturally designed building – the laboratory and the collection, the latter comprising original dinosaur fossils found in the region that make up the incomplete skeletons of 'Matilda' and 'Banjo'. Each side is visited on a 30-minute tour (9am, 10am, 11am, noon, 1pm and 2pm) with a half-hour break in between.
National Park
One of the more accessible national parks in Outback Queensland, Bladensburg lies south of Winton and can be visited on a half-day drive from there. Pick up the Route of the River Gum driving itinerary from the visitor centre in Winton. River red gums and coolibah trees, grassy flood plains, sandstone escarpments – Bladensburg ticks many boxes for outback scenery. Both red and eastern grey kangaroos are found here as well as numerous bird species.
National Park
The homeland of the Maiawali and Karuwali Indigenous peoples, Diamantina was a cattle station from the 19th century until it became a national park in 1992. This is the outback at its best: beautiful rivers and channels, lined with eucalyptuses, that rarely run with water, flood plains to the horizon, sandstone escarpments set aflame by glorious sunsets and sand dunes. The park, southeast of Boulia and southwest of Winton, is accessible in a 4WD.
National Park
If your defining image of the outback is red sand dunes, red-rock escarpments, billabongs and spinifex plains, you might be thinking of Welford. West of the Quilpie–Jundah road, Desert Drive (22km one-way) is the pick of the routes through the park if you're looking for dunes. Nearby is River Drive (12.3km one-way), while east of the road is Mulga Drive (54.5km return), good for escarpment views, especially from Swayers Lookout. You'll need a high-clearance 4WD to explore the park.
Museum
In a beautifully conceived building with an impressive multiarched design, this is a fine museum, and also a tribute to outback pioneers, early explorers, stockmen and Indigenous Australians. Five themed galleries, some featuring interactive touch-screen displays, cover Aboriginal culture; European exploration (there's a nifty map showing the trails of Burke and Wills, Ludwig Leichhardt, Ernest Giles and co); pioneers and pastoralists; 'Life in the Outback'; and the stockman's gallery.