What is the Outback?

The Outback refers to the vast remote, arid, and semi-arid interior of Australia. It is not a single geographic region but a cultural shorthand for the country's inland regions of low rainfall, sparse population, large pastoral stations, mining towns, Aboriginal communities, and red-dirt country.

By area the Outback covers about 70 per cent of Australia, including most of Western Australia, the Northern Territory, central Queensland, and northern South Australia. Iconic Outback places include Uluru, Alice Springs, Coober Pedy, Broken Hill, Birdsville, the Kimberley, the Pilbara, and the Channel Country. Yet only about three per cent of Australians live in the Outback, and most of those live in regional service centres rather than on isolated stations.

The Outback has shaped Australian identity through the writing of Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, the painting of Albert Namatjira and Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly series, and films such as Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee, and Sweet Country. Aboriginal cultures have managed this country for tens of thousands of years, and most Outback land is now held under native title or Indigenous Protected Area arrangements alongside pastoral leases.

Modern Outback economies depend on cattle and sheep stations covering thousands of square kilometres, mining (iron ore in the Pilbara, gold around Kalgoorlie, copper at Olympic Dam, opal at Coober Pedy), and tourism along routes such as the Stuart Highway, the Birdsville Track, the Canning Stock Route, the Gibb River Road, and the Savannah Way. Services to remote communities are delivered through the Royal Flying Doctor Service (founded 1928), the School of the Air (since 1951), and Centrelink remote service centres. Climate change is making the already harsh Outback hotter and more drought-prone.