Northern Territory, Australia

The Northern Territory is the outback and the tropics in the same jurisdiction, and the two halves have almost nothing in common. Darwin in the north is a tropical city with a permanent backpacker population, crocodiles in the harbour and a wet season that empties it; Alice Springs in the south is nine hundred miles away, genuinely isolated desert town with a real flying-doctor base and a permanent Indigenous population. Between them is Uluru — the enormous red monolith that is the most recognisable natural feature in the country and a sacred site to its traditional owners — as well as Kakadu with its rock art that is genuinely tens of thousands of years old, and Katherine Gorge cutting through the escarpment.

The territory's character is remote, genuinely rough-edged and significantly Indigenous — Aboriginal culture is not a tourism add-on here, it is the oldest continuous culture on earth and the land rights settlement that returned Uluru to its owners in 1985 is a real part of how the territory works.

Expect genuine outback content, real remote-town character, and a territory where the distances are measured in days rather than hours.

Nearby: Darwin Cairns Townsville Adelaide