It’s official: Off the Main Road is now a magazine.
The Outback Edition is now on sale, in print and digital.

North of Townsville, two faces of the wet tropics: Big Crystal Creek, a clear rainforest swimming hole, and Wallaman Falls, Australia’s tallest single-drop waterfall, plunging 269 metres into a misty gorge.

A slow guide to Townsville, North Queensland: Castle Hill views, the Strand, Queensland Museum Tropics, the RAAF Museum, and a dog-friendly wander at the Palmetum.

It's official: Off the Main Road is now a magazine. The Outback Edition launches mid-August, print and digital.

A 2010 camping trip with my dad into the outback: Mungo’s Walls of China, the Birdsville Track cut by a flooded Cooper Creek, the government punt, and Lake Eyre holding water. The trip that started everything.

The heat sent Zoe (and us) east, and Hughenden was the perfect stop: a free RV camp, Hughie the Muttaburrasaurus, town street art, and a coolibah tree blazed by explorers hunting Burke and Wills.

Most people drive through Batchelor on the way to Litchfield. Stop, and you find a miniature Czech castle built by a homesick miner, a Cold War uranium mine, and a wartime airfield with a famous visitor.

Between Mount Isa and Cloncurry sit the empty streets of Mary Kathleen, a uranium mining town built in the 1950s, sold off entirely at auction in 1983, and now a ghostly grid of slabs and silence. Perfect for camping!

A chain of World War Two airstrips lines the Stuart Highway on the run to Darwin. We stopped at Strauss and Gorrie, once the country's biggest airbase, and drove past the rest, each named for a lost pilot.

Our airboat trip with Northern Territory Airboats gave us a fast look at the Bynoe wetlands. Crocodiles on the banks, birdlife across the floodplains and a guide who knew the country well. A relaxed Top End wildlife experience.

We drove to Fogg Dam near Darwin expecting a few ducks and found hundreds of birds, three crocodiles, and two tourists we probably saved from becoming breakfast on the closed, croc-lined dam wall.

We broke the curse the only way we could, by cheating and flying. A doorless chopper, sandstone towers older than almost anything on earth, and a walk through a Lost City with no one else in sight.

Every expedition needs a curse, and ours began the moment we left Mount Isa chasing the Lost Cities. Plagues of bugs, biblical rain, a brutal road, and a mysterious rash.

Three days out to Boulia via Poddy Creek and the Middleton Hotel, the Min Min Encounter, outback sunsets and no actual Min Min sightings. Then north to a spectacular free camp at Dajarra Dam on the way to Mount Isa.

After three visits, here's what we'd actually send a friend to do in Longreach! Qantas history, outback rail and river tours, and a stockman's show. Not everything, just our favourites.

Back in Longreach for our third visit. Outback rail adventures, a sunset cruise on the Thomson River, the Longreach Races, new Akubras, and the friendliest welcome yet.

The Matilda Way is a 1,900-kilometre touring route from Bourke in New South Wales to Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria, passing through the heart of outback Queensland via Charleville, Longreach and Winton.

Blackall’s Historical Woolscour is the only surviving steam-powered woolscour in Australia, operating since 1908. Add Jackie Howe’s unbroken shearing record and a free camp on the Barcoo River, and you have one of outback Queensland’s best stops.

Tambo delivers more than it advertises — Tambo Teddies and a station side quest, chicken races that got out of hand, and the site of Qantas’s first fatal crash in 1927. A small town with a lot going on.

Four visits to Charleville and still finding new things — the Angellala Creek explosion site, the Airfield Museum, the Bureau of Meteorology weather balloon and the WWII quarry that built the airport runways.