Australien

While it has its seedy and downright ugly side, there’s no denying that Surfers' frenetic few blocks and its glorious strip of sand attracts a phenomenal number of visitors – 20,000 per day at its peak. Party-hard teens and early-20-somethings come here for a heady dose of clubs, bars and malls, perhaps fitting in a bit of beach time as a hangover remedy before it all starts again. Families are attracted by the ready availability of spacious and affordable apartments, loads of kid-friendly eating options and, yes, that beautiful beach.

Named for cliffs of colourful, mineral-rich sand, Rainbow Beach is an idyllic Australian beach town on Butchulla land at the base of the Inskip Peninsula. Beloved of European backpackers and the chief contender to Hervey Bay as a base for excursions to Fraser Island, it's a generally low-key place that nonetheless offers a few hostels hot-housing all the frenetic action a young, fun-seeking clientele could want. Ideally reached via the Cooloola Section of the Great Sandy National Park, a dramatic approach possible only for 4WDs, it's more easily and conventionally accessed by excellent roads from Gympie, 73km southwest. It's a great place to try your hand at different outdoor activities, tap into the backpacker party scene, or just chill out with family and friends.

Providing a buffer between New South Wales' capital-city sprawl to the south and Queensland's Gold Coast strip up over the border, northern NSW offers an altogether simpler way of life. Lovely, lazy beach towns and pristine national parks leapfrog each other all the way up this stupendous stretch of scenic coast. Inland, lush farmland and ancient tracts of World Heritage–listed rainforest do the same, punctuated by hinterland towns with a character and charm all to themselves. Farmers rub shoulders with big-city sea-changers and post-hippie alternative lifestylers here: if you're looking for stellar local produce, a single-origin coffee or a psychic reading, you won't be disappointed. And if you're searching for a surf break, rest assured there will be an awesome one, right around the next corner.

The area north of the Eyre Peninsula and the Flinders Ranges stretches into the vast, empty spaces of the South Australian outback – about 70% of the state, covering the traditional lands of dozens of Indigenous nations. If you're prepared, travelling through this sparsely populated and harsh country is utterly rewarding.

Sandstränder, surfvågor och vin. Australiens västkust är som gjord för en roadtrip för dig som är både naturälskare och finsmakare.

Baked, straw-coloured plains, hawthorn hedgerows, rows of poplars, roadside mansions… Tasmania’s Midlands have a distinct English-countryside feel. This is old-school Tasmania, tracing the route between Hobart and Launceston hammered out by convict gangs in the early 1800s. As the road rolled itself out, sandstone garrison towns and pastoral properties appeared: the Midlands soon became the food factory of Van Diemen's Land.

Between Nelson Bay and Woolgoolga, the coast is riddled with lakes and shot through with swaths of coastal eucalypt and rainforest, much of it protected in national parks. The joy here is forsaking the Pacific Hwy for leafy roads that cut across to the coast, taking detours and switching back. What you'll find at the end of the road are wonderfully unpretentious beach towns, basic campgrounds beside dunes and rivers, and miles and miles of lush nothing. The big towns here are Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour, which can appear busy and built-up but nevertheless manage to maintain a languid holiday pace.

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.

North of popular Sunshine Coast, this little pocket of quintessential Queensland takes in World Heritage–listed Fraser Island; mellow coastal communities such as Hervey Bay and Rainbow Beach; the sugar-cane capital Bundaberg; and numerous old-fashioned country towns never too far from the ocean.

Like a paste jewel set in a tiara of natural splendours, Broome clings to a narrow strip of pindan (red-soil country) on the Kimberley's far-western edge, at the base of the pristine Dampier Peninsula. Surrounded by the aquamarine waters of the Indian Ocean and the creeks, mangroves and mudflats of Roebuck Bay, this Yawuru Country is a good 2000km from the nearest capital city.