THE OUTBACK

Understanding the outback and its place in Australia is a task as limitless as the landscape itself. One thing is for sure though: a journey into the outback is one you won’t soon forget. Hair-raising ascents to the top of a mountain, close encounters with a crocodile, stories from a 50,000-year-old culture and nights spent sleeping under a vast and vibrant canopy of stars are just some of the unbelievable experiences you’ll ›ind in outback Australia.

A REGIONAL SHOWCASE

Cooktown is a breathtakingly beautiful and relatively unspoilt region of the Cape York Peninsula, easily reached via a 45-minute ›light or four-hour drive from Cairns. Time your adventure to this remote part of Australia to coincide with this year’s Cooktown Expo, held from 17 July to 4 August. This three-week regional event celebrates 250 years of shared history between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, centred around the ›irst recorded act was damaged after it hit the Great Barrier Reef at high tide, leading Cook and his crew to spend 48 days in Cooktown (previously known as Waymburr) with local Indigenous Australians. This, along with the ›irst sightings of kangaroos, crocodiles, dingoes, possums and other native Australian species, is what Cooktown is known for. The action-packed expo program includes the Reconciliation Rocks Music Festival, Cooktown Discovery Festival and Endeavour Festival, as well as other live performances by Troy Cassar-Daley, Busby Marou and Mau Power, a re-enactment of the Captain Cook landing, kids’ rides, family entertainment, workshops, bush-tucker tastings and much more.