Travellers Notes: What is the Overlander’s Way?
The Overlander’s Way is a 1,090-kilometre touring route across North West Queensland, running from Townsville on the coast to Camooweal on the Northern Territory border. It follows the Flinders Highway west through Charters Towers, Hughenden, Richmond and Julia Creek to Cloncurry, then the Barkly Highway on through Mount Isa to Camooweal, where it continues as the Barkly Highway into the NT and on to Tennant Creek.
The route takes its name not from a person but from the drovers themselves, the ‘over-landers’ who moved huge mobs of cattle from Northern Territory stock routes across Queensland’s interior to coastal markets through the 1800s. It later did double duty as a wartime supply line, with sections of the Barkly Highway built during WWII to link the south to the front line in the NT.
The Overlander’s Way is fully sealed and suitable for caravans and motorhomes throughout, though it carries a fair share of road trains, particularly between Julia Creek, Cloncurry and Mount Isa, so give yourself time and space when overtaking. The country changes constantly: tropical coast at Townsville, gold rush hills around Charters Towers, dinosaur and fossil country through Hughenden and Richmond, wide black soil downs at Julia Creek, then rugged mining ranges from Cloncurry through to Mount Isa and out toward Camooweal.
Charters Towers and Cloncurry are the two standout stops, both well worth several days each. Mount Isa is outback Queensland’s only city and a good spot to restock, while Camooweal, right on the NT border, is a quiet last stop with a peaceful billabong worth the detour.
We’ve travelled sections of the Overlander’s Way on multiple trips and have written about Townsville, Charters Towers, Cloncurry and Camooweal in more detail.
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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.