13 extraordinary places to visit in Outback Queensland

Making up 65 percent of an already gargantuan region of Australia, Outback Queensland is a sprawling and beautifully rugged destination quite at odds with the balmy, heavily populated coastline to its east. Here, nature rules: vast red plains stretch into the horizon, and the arid savannah gives way to fertile national parks, steep gorges, lush wetlands, and dense forests. The scenery spectacularly transforms as you take the long roads from the beaches of Brisbane and Cairns to the bush. Outback Queensland is serious road trip country.

It's also a region brimming with authentic Aussie culture that goes beyond being the birthplace of Qantas Airlines and the unofficial national anthem, "Waltzing Matilda." Factor in a host of fascinating museums and historical attractions — plus winsome towns like Longreach, Hughenden, and Charleville — and you have a destination packed with unique experiences. The best things to see while you're there? This roundup of brilliant places to visit in Outback Queensland covers them all.

1. Qantas Founders Museum, Longreach

Australia's national airline is undoubtedly Outback Queensland's most successful export. Founded as the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services by the aviators Hudson Fysh, Paul McGinness, and Fergus McMaster in 1920, the "Flying Kangaroo" has become a bona fide icon. The Qantas Founders Museum traces the company's history via life-size displays, historical ephemera, and interactive installations such as the Qantas Hangar — featured on the National Heritage List since 2009 — and a bevy of planes including an Avro 504k replica, a Lockheed Super Constellation, and a Boeing 747.

Insider tip: The Captain's Club experience gives you a full VIP tour of the museum and aircraft, which ends with a state-of-the-art, hyper-immersive light and sound show.

Address and opening hours: Sir Hudson Fysh Drive, Longreach, QLD 4730. Open 9:00 AM-4:00 PM daily from April to mid-October and 9:00 AM-1:00 PM daily in summer (mid-October to March). Public holidays can affect opening hours. Check the official website for the current opening hours.

2. The Big Rig, Roma

The town of Roma — in the Outback's Maranoa Region, a six-hour drive from Brisbane — is a nexus for Australia's oil and gas exploration legacy, and The Big Rig is its most striking monument. The 40-meter-tall, steam-powered steel drilling rig built in 1929 is a jumping-off point for exploring this part of the region's history. A guided tour of the accompanying museum with a "Roma Rigger" gives a startling insight into the function of the rig and other mining gear and highlights the stories of those who worked on it.

Insider tip: As dusk falls, stick around for the Big Rig Sunset Experience — a fascinating display that delves deep into the rig's working life in the 1930s and Australia's broader oil and gas history.

Address and opening hours: 2 Riggers Road, Roma, QLD 4455. Open year-round, 8.30 AM-4:00 PM, except Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day, and reduced hours on Anzac Day. Check the official website for the current opening hours.

3. Bladensburg National Park, Winton

The home of the Indigenous Koa, Maiawali, and Karuwali people, Bladensburg National Park is an 849-square-kilometer expanse of Mitchell Grass Downs and Channel Country. Its idyllic biodiversity makes it one of the most stunning places to visit in Queensland. Flat-topped plateaus segue into sandstone ranges, overlooking river flats, river red gum, clay pans, black soil plains, and rugged escarpments. Look for common birdlife, like the painted firetail and rufous-throated honeyeater.

Insider tip: A tour of Bladensburg National Park, which includes a visit to the old homestead and shearing shed, plus Scrammy Gorge for panoramic views, gives a fascinating insight into the Outback's agricultural history.

Address and opening hours: Bladensburg Access, Opalton, QLD 4735. Open year-round. Check the official website for the current opening hours.

4. Carnarvon Range, Upper Dawson

The Great Dividing Range is one of eastern Australia's defining features — a giant collection of mountain ranges, uplands, and foothills, of which the Carnarvon Range is a 160-kilometer-long (99 miles) plateau set within the Carnarvon National Park. It's an alluring area: a hotbed of native plantlife and animals like rock wallabies and leaf-tailed geckos; a significant nexus for Aboriginal rock art, particularly in the well-trodden Carnarvon Gorge, and burial sites; and extraordinary prehistoric natural splendor.

Insider tip: An organized tour of the Carnarvon Range is the best way to explore its indigenous art, rock formations, and sweeping views of the Arcadia Valley.

Address and opening hours: Open year-round with various points of access near Upper Dawson, QLD 4454.

5. Kronosaurus Korner, Richmond

The dusty expanses of central Outback Queensland seem unlikely hunting grounds for marine fossils, but that's precisely what you can find here. The region was once home to an enormous inland sea, and fossils from the long-extinct reptiles, fish, ammonites, and squid that once filled it abound. You can see many of them at Kronosaurus Korner, Richmond's excellently named fossil museum founded in 1989 with the discovery of the "Richmond Pliosaur," one of the world's most meticulously preserved Cretaceous marine reptile fossils. These days, it holds over a thousand specimens, from the monstrous Kronosaurus to the feathery, flying lizard pterosaur and a host of spiral-shelled cephalopods.

Insider tip: Embrace your inner paleontologist on a digging tour at dawn, on which you'll learn how to find, identify, and excavate your own Early Cretaceous fossil.

Address and opening hours: 91-93 Goldring Street, Richmond, QLD 4822. From April to October: 8:30 AM-4:00 PM Monday-Friday; 9:00 AM-3:00 PM Saturday-Sunday. From November to March: 8:30 AM-4:00 PM Monday-Friday; 9:00 AM-2:00 PM on Saturdays; closed on Sundays. Public holidays can affect opening hours. Check the official website for the current opening hours.

6. Eromanga Natural History Museum, Eromanga

In 2004, 14-year-old Sandy Mackenzie discovered Outback Queensland's largest dinosaur — a titanosaur, dug from the earth at his family property west of Eromanga, the furthest town from the ocean in Australia. The subsequent years saw many significant finds in the area, the abundance of which made it a global attraction for fossicking. You can now find many of the recovered bones during the Australian Dinosaur Giants tour at Eromanga Natural History Museum, one of Outback Queensland's top attractions, not least those of "Cooper," a 30-meter-long (98-foot) Australotitan cooperensis — Australia's largest-ever dinosaur find.

Insider tip: Cooper may be the key draw, but don't miss the museum's array of "megafauna" — oversized, prehistoric ancestors of the kangaroos, wombats, and monitor lizards we know today.

Address and opening hours: 1 Dinosaur Drive, Eromanga, QLD 4480. The museum is open 8:30 AM-4:30 PM every day from April to October, is closed on Sundays and Mondays from November to February, and is closed on Sundays in March. Check the official website for the current opening hours.

7. Australian Age of Dinosaurs, Winton

The Outback's prehistoric intrigue continues at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs, the country's most extensive collection of fossils, located in an area of stunning wilderness known as the Jump-Up, just southwest of Winton. It's all split across three facilities: the Fossil Preparation Laboratory; the Collection Room, home to Banjo, Matilda, and Wade, three near-complete dinosaur skeletons; and Dinosaur Canyon, where life-sized exhibits are cast in bronze and set in the landscape in which they were discovered.

Insider tip: Join the pros for the lab-based Prep-A-Dino experience and learn how to find, excavate, and conserve these gigantic bones.

Address and opening hours: Lot 1, Dinosaur Drive, The Jump-Up Dark-Sky Sanctuary, Winton, QLD 4735. 8:30 AM-5:00 PM daily, April to October; 8:00 AM-5:00 PM every day except Sundays, November to March. Check the official website for the current opening hours.

8. Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame & Outback Heritage Centre, Longreach

The Outback's stockmen — workers who traditionally tended the herds on the region's vast livestock stations — are integral figures in Australia's agricultural history. This Longreach museum, founded by former stockman and artist Hugh Sawrey in 1974, is an apt memorial to the pioneers who helped tame (a little, anyway) the country's unforgiving landscape. It's replete with interactive projections of outback stations and an immersive Pioneer's Hut, exhibits on the melding of Indigenous pathways and stock routes, and a look at the essential skills of horse breaking, cattle drafting, and roping, among many other things.

Insider tip: Pay your respects at the Unsung Heroes display — a touching tribute to the unheralded craftspeople, shearers, drovers, and stockers who shaped the Outback.

Address and opening hours: Landsborough Highway, PO Box 171, Longreach, QLD 4730. Open Tuesday-Saturday, 9:00 AM-2:00 PM. Check the official website for the current opening hours.

9. Lark Quarry Conservation Park, Opalton

A striking mix of gullies, broken escarpments, and ancient mesas, Lark Quarry is — or, rather, was — the site of the world's only known dinosaur stampede. Ninety-five million years ago, on a fertile lake basin, a herd of at least 150 dinosaurs, probably panicked by a more giant predator, fled across the mudflats, leaving over 3,300 footprints now visible in the dry rockface. They're protected within the Dinosaur Stampede National Monument, and guided tours include animated recreations of the charge and a deep dive into the history of its discovery.

Insider tip: Take an explanatory flyer and head into the scorched landscape around the Monument on the Spinifex Circuit on a self-guided route with beautiful views of the surrounding Mitchell Grass Downs.

Address and opening hours: Opalton, QLD 4735 (110km from Winton). Open 8:30 AM-5:00 PM daily, except on Sundays from October to March. Check the official website for the current opening hours.

10. Waltzing Matilda Centre, Winton

Australia's definitive anthem is immortalized and lovingly dissected in this slick Winton museum. Banjo Paterson's timeless tribute to the itinerant swagman, or drifter — waltzing meaning walking; Matilda, his tied "swag" of possessions — has long attained mythical status in the Australian cultural psyche, recorded and rearranged untold times. The Waltzing Matilda Centre's displays and exhibits are a testament to its longevity. Also attached to the center is the Qantilda Museum, which explores Winton's history and the early days of Qantas.

Insider tip: Take a moment to reflect and cool off under the towering coolibah tree like the song's swagman did.

Address and opening hours: 50 Elderslie Street, Winton, QLD 4735. Open 9:00 AM-5:00 PM daily, but closed at weekends October-March. Check the official website for the current opening hours.

11. The Lake, Quilpie

Ever longed to stay on a 2,500-acre outback station, heady with Merino sheep, beef cattle, and Kalahari red goats? The Lake, Quilpie offers just that, with powered and unpowered camping, two nicely-appointed cottages, and The Quarters, a six-bedroom former shearers' accommodation. Wilful minimalism is the appeal here: guests can soak in the shining, lily-carpeted expanses of Lake Houdraman from the waterside bathhouse and take a private 4WD station tour with owner Dan Hoch, and that's about it.

Insider tip: You'll need to bring your own, but kayaking around the lake is an immersively languid way of experiencing this tranquil place, as well as eyeballing the flocks of native waterfowl up close.

Address and opening hours: The Lake, 20545 Diamantina Developmental Rd, Quilpie QLD 4480. Open year-round. Check the official website for the current opening hours.

12. The Bilby Experience, Charleville

The bilby, or "rabbit-bandicoot," is a Lilliputian marsupial living in the Mitchell Grass Downs of South West Queensland and several other arid regions of Australia. An adorable mishmash of mouse, rabbit, and kangaroo — all protruding snouts, long ears, and furry tail — they're long endangered and thus the focus of a fascinating breeding and conservation program at this Charleville center, which also offers an engaging primer on the dinky animal's natural habitat and character.

Insider tip: A tour is essential, as you'll see a host of real-life bilbies in their red-lit enclosure. The colored lighting allows these usually nocturnal creatures to be happily active in the visitor-friendly daytime.

Address and opening hours: King Street, Charleville, QLD 4470. Book in advance. The center closes over the high summer season. Check the official website for the current opening hours.

13. Miles Historical Village Museum, Miles

Opened in 1971 along the Warrego Highway, around a four-hour drive from Brisbane, the Miles Historical Village Museum comprises over 30 immaculately preserved, genuine buildings from the 19th and 20th centuries. Its Main Street is a figurative walk through the ages, providing a genuinely evocative sense of municipal life in days gone by, whether at a bakery, chemist, mail office, or the fascinating primitive 1890s Hippong pioneer homestead. There's also an enormous collection of over 4,000 gemstones, minerals, and pieces of petrified wood, plus an exhibit dedicated to the ancient history of the Great Artesian Basin.

Insider tip: A digression from the usual museum remit, the Shell House Collection is a gem of an inventory of pan-Australian and global shells, coral, and other marine ephemera, with some specimens the size of footballs.

Address and opening hours: 141 Murilla St, Miles, QLD 4415. Open daily, 8.30 AM-4.30 PM. Check the official website for the current opening hours.