Where does the outback actually begin? Even Tourism Australia isn’t sure

Tassie’s not the outback. Neither is Canberra. Uluru – that irresistible drawcard in the geographic and spiritual heart of Australia – most definitely is.

Between those far-flung certainties are hundreds of thousands of square kilometres that aren’t as easy to define, even if you’re an Australian who is extremely familiar with this “wide brown land” (brown? Surely Dorothea Mackellar meant “red”). No wonder you find odd questions on Google such as “what city is near the outback in Australia?” and “what is the real outback in Australia?”

Credit: Jamie Brown

Strewth. The outback is real, all right, but also myth and legend, as hard to grasp as a shimmering mirage. So where does the outback begin and end?

I started pondering this question a few years back after chortling over a cover line on an esteemed weekly magazine. It boldly stated that Biloela was in outback Queensland. Having spent part of my childhood in the nearby town of Monto, I knew that was wildly untrue. Biloela is surrounded by verdant countryside and is a mere 100 kilometres from the coast as the crow flies. In less than two hours, you can drive north to the thriving city of Rockhampton – Australia’s Beef Capital - and join its throng of 85,000 residents. Only a headline writer in Sydney would think Biloela is in the outback.

Mount Isa caravan park co-owner and outback ambassador for Drive Queensland, Kylie Rixon, has thoughts on the subject. “We’re not the bush, we’re not the country – we’re the outback,” she tells me, when describing her remote mining community that’s roughly halfway between Darwin and Brisbane. “The outback to me is a feeling which is hard to put into words. It’s that sense of community, that calmness, the serenity, the isolation, which a lot of the time is not geographical.

“We are geographically isolated but, as far as community goes, we’re far from isolated. Because we all live so remotely, our friends become our family and our sporting teams become our Christmas barbecues. That’s why we’ve got such a strong community with sporting groups and so on, because they do become our little outback families. All of that stuff contributes to a society that’s really welcoming and nurturing and friendly.”

A road near Winton, Queensland – the outback is more of a feeling than a place.Credit: Tourism and Events Queensland/Sean Scott

According to a Tourism Australia article titled “Guide to the Outback”, some 81 per cent of our country can call itself the outback but it’s also a place with “no defined borders”. More helpfully, it adds that the outback typically falls into three climate categories: arid, semi-arid and north of the Tropic of Capricorn, a latitudinal line that runs through Rockhampton’s southern suburbs (perhaps that headline-writer wasn’t so far off after all).

Regional coastal cities such as Townsville and Cairns aren’t the outback but Broken Hill, in Far West NSW, is part of the mysterious landscape that lies somewhere beyond the “back of Bourke”.

For all the romanticising, the outback isn’t easy, with its heat and flies and spinifex, its “droughts and flooding rains”. That’s why the cooler months, from May to September, are known as “outback season”. It’s the nicest time to go. Days are mild and, in the Kimberley and the Top End, monsoonal rains give way to the bluest, most brilliant skies you’ve ever seen.

We love its quirks, like the million feral camels that are out there roaming around and the fact some pubs keep red wine in the fridge and let you pin money to the ceiling. Dig deeper and you might find a shimmer of opal, a fleck of gold, a dinosaur footprint or a pink salt lake. Your most likely souvenir, though, is an encounter with a salt-of-the-earth character who sticks in the memory long after you’ve returned home.