Carmen Leyland shares why she still loves a good Australian road trip and the freedom of exploring Australia's country towns, outback roads and hidden places.
There is something about a good Australian road trip that I don’t think I will ever tire of, Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much of my life travelling this country. Maybe it’s because some of my happiest memories have been made somewhere between where we started and where we were supposed to end up.
Or maybe it’s simply because Australia was made to be explored by road, For me, an Australian road trip doesn’t begin when we arrive at our destination. It begins the moment the bags are packed, the car is loaded and we pull out of the driveway.
There’s that wonderful feeling of knowing that for the next few days—or perhaps a few weeks—the road ahead is going to decide the rhythm of life, And after a lifetime of travelling Australia, I still love it.
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Australian Road Trips Have Been Part of My Life for Years
I was fortunate to grow up travelling Australia, and later some of those journeys became part of Leylands Travel Australia.
Travel was very different then, There were no smartphones telling us where the next fuel stop was. No Google Maps announcing we’d arrive in exactly two hours and seventeen minutes. No scrolling through hundreds of accommodation reviews before deciding where to stay.
We had maps, Real ones, The enormous paper kind that never seemed to fold back the way they started, You looked at the map, worked out roughly where you were going and headed off, Sometimes you took the wrong road, Sometimes plans changed, And sometimes getting a little lost was part of the adventure.
Looking back, I think that’s one of the things I miss most.
The Best Part of an Australian Road Trip Isn’t Always the Destination
When we plan holidays today, it’s easy to concentrate on the highlights, The famous attraction, The national park, The resort, The photograph everyone wants to take.
But some of my favourite Australian travel memories aren’t of famous attractions at all, They’re the things that happened along the way, Pulling into a tiny country town because somebody needed a toilet stop and discovering a wonderful little bakery, Stopping at an old country pub for lunch and ending up talking to a local who tells you about somewhere you’ve never heard of, Seeing an old sign pointing down a dirt road and wondering, What’s down there?
Or pulling over somewhere seemingly in the middle of nowhere, making a cup of tea and looking out across a landscape that stretches all the way to the horizon, These are the moments I remember.
What I Love About Travelling Australia by Road
One of the things I love most about an Australian road trip is watching the country slowly change around you.
Green paddocks become dry grass, Dry grass becomes red dirt, Mountains disappear and suddenly the sky seems enormous, The vegetation changes, The towns become smaller, The traffic thins out.
Eventually you realise you haven’t passed another vehicle for quite some time, You simply don’t experience Australia in quite the same way from 30,000 feet, Flying gets you to the destination.
Driving lets you experience everything in between.
Why an Australian Road Trip Into the Outback Still Excites Me
I love the coast, I love the rainforest, I love our cities and little seaside towns.
But there is something about the outback Australian Road trip that gets me every time, Maybe it’s the space, Maybe it’s the silence, Or perhaps it’s that first stretch of red dirt appearing beneath the tyres that tells me we’re heading somewhere interesting.
Out there, Australia feels enormous, You can drive for hours and seemingly see very little, yet there’s always something to notice, An old windmill turning slowly in the distance, A mob of cattle, A wedge-tailed eagle beside the road, A weathered homestead, An abandoned building that makes you wonder who once lived there, Or a tiny town consisting of little more than a pub, a fuel bowser and a handful of houses.
And somewhere along the way, there’s usually a character with a story worth hearing, Those are the people I remember.
Australian Road Trips Make You Slow Down
We live in a world where everything seems designed to save us time, Faster flights. Faster internet. Faster check-ins. Faster everything.
An Australian road trip does the opposite, It takes time, And I think that’s precisely why I still love it, You notice things, You talk, You stop, You change your plans, You see something interesting beside the road and say, “Let’s have a look.”
Some of the best places I’ve discovered in Australia weren’t places I’d planned to visit at all, We found them because we had the freedom to stop, That’s something I’ve carried with me throughout my life.
Leave room in your itinerary for Australia to surprise you.
Australian Road Trips Have Changed
Travelling Australia by road is certainly easier today in many ways, We can see exactly where we’re going. We can find fuel, accommodation, attractions and somewhere to eat with a few taps on a phone, We can check road conditions before setting out and discover places that years ago might only have been known to locals, I appreciate all of that.
But sometimes I wonder whether having so much information has taken a little of the mystery out of travelling, We can research a destination so thoroughly before arriving that we’ve virtually seen the whole thing before we get there.
I’ve started to realise that I don’t always want to know everything, Sometimes I want to turn up and discover it for myself.
Australia Still Surprises Me
You might think that after travelling so much of Australia there wouldn’t be many surprises left, There are.
That’s one of the things I love most about this country, There is always another road, Another town, Another person with an extraordinary story, Another country pub, Another landscape that makes you pull over, get out of the car and simply stand there looking at it.
And there are places I visited many years ago that I now want to see again, Some have changed enormously, Some probably haven’t changed much at all.
I’m increasingly interested in discovering both.
Revisiting the Australia I Remember
Yes, I want to discover new places, But I also want to go back, Back to places I remember from years ago, Back to towns we visited while filming, Back to stretches of road that once felt incredibly remote, I want to see what’s changed, I want to meet the people who live there today.
And I want to tell some of the stories that exist beyond the tourist brochures, There are places I visited when I was younger that I probably didn’t fully appreciate at the time.
Now I want to experience them again through very different eyes.
Why I Still Love a Good Australian Road Trip
For me, travelling Australia has never been about ticking destinations off a list, It’s about the journey between them, It’s about the people you meet, It’s the little country town you weren’t planning to visit, It’s the unexpected conversation at the pub, it’s making a cuppa beside the road, It’s taking the turn-off you hadn’t planned to take simply because you’re curious about what’s down there.
And it’s that feeling I still get when the car is packed, there’s a full tank of fuel and a long Australian road disappears towards the horizon, After all these years, I still want to know what’s around the next bend.
And I hope I always will.
— Carmen Leyland
Leylands Travel Australia
