Adventures are more than heart-racing, dangerous pursuits. They’re venturing into remote regions. Trying something new. Experiences that fill you with awe and leave you with exciting stories to tell. These 15 inspiring adventures will do just that.
1. Stay on a working outback cattle station, Northern Territory
Set on more than 160,000 hectares of privately owned countryside – technically in the Northern Territory but considered part of the Kimberley – Bullo River Station is where outback hospitality meets untold adventure. The Sibella Court-designed property is the latest to join Luxury Lodges of Australia and defines the concept of ‘luxury of experience’. It’s a taste of life on a remote cattle station, with access to exceptional experiences such as a helicopter flight over a landscape carved and braided by gorges, waterfalls and jewel-like waterholes that you can swim in.
2. Swim with sea lions in Baird Bay, Eyre Peninsula
The sleepy town of Baird Bay has a permanent population of just five, greatly outnumbered by the 140 Australian sea lions that inhabit its sheltered bay. Witness these playful creatures corkscrew and pirouette around you on the Baird Bay Experience, three hours north of Port Lincoln, on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. Sleep in newly renovated rammed earth buildings that overlook the bay, while in-house chef Calvin Von Niebel serves up a menu of maritime abundance pulled from the waters directly in front.
3. Take a walk among Heysen’s gum trees, Adelaide Hills
Who knew that hidden in a sleepy dale, deep in the Adelaide Hills, was an artistic hotspot that once lured in the creative likes of Marcel Marceau and Anna Pavlova. For half a century, The Cedars was one of the country’s first stops for world-renowned artists making the voyage to Australia to visit German-born Hans Heysen, who grew to become one of Australia’s most celebrated landscape artists. Walk among the famous gum trees that were his ever-present muse on the 40-minute Artist’s Walk weaving through the 60-hectare property.
4. Learn the untold stories of Parliament House, Canberra
‘If these walls could talk’ is a regular utterance by visitors to Parliament House. But on this exclusive look at the daily goings-on of the heart of Australian democracy, your guide does the talking for them. Going beyond any year-six school excursion and public guided tour, this signature experience through Cultural Attractions of Australia grants you access to roped-off areas where usually only staff are allowed – and tells the stories that these walls have kept quiet for decades.
5. Take a cultural culinary journey in WA
One minute you might be indulging in fine dining at one of Perth’s top luxury hotels, the next you’re foraging native foods with Traditional Custodians in the far reaches of the Kimberley. Whet your appetite for Western Australia on one of The Ritz-Carlton, Perth x Fervor bespoke packages , which are carefully designed to include once-in-a-lifetime culinary and tourism experiences for its guests.
6. Sleep in luxury near Yellow Water Billabong, Kakadu
From ‘tent store’ in the 1960s to modern-day tourism hotspot, Kakadu’s Cooinda Lodge has elevated its offering once more with the new Yellow Water Villas. These safari-style tents are named for the Yellow Water (Ngurrungurrudjba) wetlands, which encapsulate all that is magical about Kakadu National Park – waterbirds dancing in a choreographed ballet, buffaloes padding along the banks of the billabong, saltwater crocs lurking in the shallows. And what’s more, the villas on Murumburr Country have been built on stilts to meet the wet season waterline and minimise impact on the land, all while cocooning guests in luxury.
7. Take a regional festival road trip
What do you get when you bring together a strong sense of small-town pride, a line-up of great music and an epic backdrop? A bloody good reason for a road trip. Regional festivals are having a moment. There’s Savannah in the Round (a country music bash in the Cairns hinterland), Port Fairy Folk Festival (a tourism juggernaut that has been running since 1977) and Townsville’s Australian Festival of Chamber Music (which had a record-breaking year in 2024). And in what may be considered an odd pairing of classical music and Australian outback, the Festival of Outback Opera is a truly magical event held in Winton and Longreach each May.
8. Walk along cliff tops, Blue Mountains
The Blue Mountains is home to some of the country’s most breathtaking bushwalks, through lush vegetation, striking rock formations and boundless views on the lands of the Gundungurra people. Launched in early 2024, the Grand Cliff Top Walk connects some of the most scenic of those tracks into a single hike that covers 19 kilometres over two days, from Wentworth Falls to Katoomba.
9. Enjoy a culinary cycle through Victoria’s High Country
King Valley in Victoria’s High Country. (Image: Visit Victoria/Ben Savage)
Victoria’s High Country has long lured gourmands craving to visit some of the state’s finest artisan makers and growers. A self-guided Pedal to Produce itinerary strings together some of the best of Australia’s first ‘Gourmet Region’, with a handful of lauded restaurants, such as Ava’s and Henley’s Wine Bar & Kitchen, along the way. E-bikes make the journey more comfortable, as you whizz past cows and kangaroos grazing on apple-green pastures, through Ned Kelly Country where the Brown Brothers winery put the village of Milawa on the map.
10. Shift your perspective on Uluṟu, NT
Experiencing Uluṟu through Anangu guides shifts your perspective. The landscape is no longer simply a vast, open plain; it’s a book, a kitchen, a medicine cabinet, and a layered archive of personal history. Join a Maruku Arts’ cultural walking tour or dine under a desert sky during the Tali Wiṟu dining experience, to hear the Tjukurpa stories in this iconic landscape that will reveal itself as a vessel of stories, a home and a wellspring of spirituality.
11. Take an oyster and wine road trip in Tassie
Tasmania is home to 185 licensed wine producers but roughly half of these world-class drops never leave the Apple Isle… so if you want to sample some of our country’s best wine, you must go straight to the source. This epic two-week road trip from Hobart to Launceston – stopping in verdant regions such as the Huon Valley, Bruny Island and the East Coast – is one for culinary enthusiasts cherry-picking the best wine producers and oyster farms to stop along the way.
12. Go searching for salties, Queensland
Queensland’s second largest national park is adventure territory. A landscape of sandstone hills, sweeping grasslands and coastal estuaries, this natural floodplain is notorious for two resident species. The first is barramundi, which are prized by anglers. The second is saltwater crocs. Find these feared beasts around the waterways of Rinyirru National Park with Outback Spirit , making your base the cosy cabins at Lotusbird Lodge, set amongst shady eucalypts on the banks of a billabong.
13. Explore the hip hood around Waterloo, Sydney
In the atmospheric inner-south suburbs of Sydney/Warrane, Waterloo Metro Station is woven around a world of street art, urban treasures and railway history. Carriageworks is a cavernous hub for the arts, housed in a historic railway workshop. In South Eveleigh, a drinking, dining and lifestyle precinct, follow the tracks through the old foundry for a blacksmithing class at Eveleigh Works. And seek out The EVE Hotel, Sydney’s newest and hottest hotel on the site of the old Wunderlich Factory in Redfern.
14. Cosy up with the small guys in McLaren Vale, SA
It may not be as famous as its neighbour, but McLaren Vale is one of the country’s oldest and most acclaimed wine regions, with some 500 vineyards and 90 cellar doors. Small Batch Wine Tours shines a light on the smaller and lesser-known producers in the region. A favourite stop is the shared cellar door of Lino Ramble, Sherrah Wines and Bondar Wines (the latter one of James Halliday’s top 100 wineries for 2024). Slip between the rooms of this charming cottage to sip on the wines and meet (and belly-laugh) with the winemakers themselves.
15. Lace up your shoes for NSW’s newest coastal walk
Spanning Narrawallee Inlet just north of Mollymook to Blackburn Head at Burrill Lake, the new 20-kilometre Southern Headlands Walk weaves in some of the South Coast’s best coastal scenery with a few hidden gems along the way. Connecting existing tracks, you’ll pass through Sydney Basin’s Bangalay Sand Forest, an endangered ecological area; marvel at 270-million-year-old marine fossils near Ulladulla Harbour; and rock-hop between incredible swimming spots.
