Australian Outback
The Australian Outback is the vast inland part of Australia, far from the coast. It is a huge dry area covering more than 70% of the entire continent. The Outback is famous for its red soil, its iconic giant rock Uluru, its kangaroos and emus, and the rich cultures of the Aboriginal peoples who have lived here for over 60,000 years.
- Areaapprox. 5.6 million km²About 70% of all of Australia
- CountryAustraliaIn the centre and west of the continent
- Famous landmarkUluruGiant sandstone rock in the centre
- Famous wildlifeKangaroos, emus, koalasPlus wombats, dingoes and quolls
- Aboriginal heritage60,000+ yearsThe oldest continuous culture on Earth
- PopulationTinyapprox. 10% of Australians live in the Outback
The Outback compared to other deserts
The Outback combines several individually-named deserts (the Great Victoria, the Great Sandy, the Gibson, the Tanami, the Simpson and others). Together they form one of the largest desert regions in the world.
What is the Outback?
"Outback" is an Australian word for the remote, sparsely populated interior of the country. It is not a single desert but a collection of several named deserts plus dry grasslands and scrubland: the Great Victoria, Great Sandy, Gibson, Tanami, Simpson, Strzelecki, Sturt and other deserts all sit inside the Outback. The whole region is famous for its red iron-rich soil and the brilliant blue sky overhead.
Most Australians live near the coast, in a handful of large cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide). Only approx. 10% of the population lives in the vast Outback interior. The Outback contains huge cattle stations (some larger than entire European countries), mines, and small isolated towns hundreds of kilometres apart.
Uluru
Uluru (also called Ayers Rock) is the world's most famous single rock. It is a giant sandstone monolith that rises 348 metres above the surrounding plain in central Australia. The famous red colour comes from a thin layer of iron oxide on the surface. Uluru is sacred to the Anangu Aboriginal people, who have lived in the area for over 30,000 years. The rock features in numerous Anangu Dreamtime stories that explain its formation and its various features. Climbing Uluru was banned in 2019 out of respect for its sacred status.
The Dreamtime
Aboriginal Australians have lived in the Outback for at least 60,000 years, making theirs the oldest continuous culture on Earth. Their traditional belief system, called the Dreamtime or Dreaming, sees the landscape as the result of journeys and actions by ancestral beings during a creation period. Specific rocks, hills, waterholes and trees are all linked to particular Dreamtime stories and ancestors. Aboriginal people traditionally lived in small mobile bands across enormous traditional territories, moving seasonally between water sources and food-gathering areas.
European colonisation from 1788 onwards was disastrous for Aboriginal peoples. Land was taken, populations were decimated by disease and violence, and culture was systematically suppressed. The 1967 referendum finally gave Aboriginal Australians full citizenship, and the 1992 Mabo decision recognised Aboriginal native title to land for the first time. The struggle for full recognition continues.
Outback wildlife
The Outback is home to wildlife found nowhere else on Earth. Red kangaroos are the largest marsupial in the world, with males up to 2 metres tall. Emus are the second-largest birds on Earth and run instead of flying. Dingoes are wild dogs that came to Australia with Aboriginal people thousands of years ago. Wombats, echidnas, perentie monitor lizards (the fourth largest lizard in the world) and thorny devils (a small spiky lizard) all live in the Outback. The deadly inland taipan, the most venomous snake in the world, lives in the Outback but rarely encounters humans.
Deeper dive: Outback geology, the Royal Flying Doctor Service and the long droughts
The Australian continent is the oldest, flattest and most weathered of all the continents. Most Australian rocks are extremely old (over 1 billion years), and the continent has been geologically stable for hundreds of millions of years with no major mountain-building events. The result is a flat, low-elevation landscape dominated by ancient eroded landforms. The famous red colour of Outback soils comes from iron oxide, the same compound that gives rust its colour. The iron has been weathering out of the rocks and accumulating on the surface for so long that the soils contain unusually high concentrations.
One of the great inventions of life in the Outback is the Royal Flying Doctor Service, founded in 1928 by Reverend John Flynn. The RFDS provides emergency and primary medical care to people living in remote parts of Australia, many of whom are hundreds of kilometres from the nearest hospital. The service operates 79 aircraft from 23 bases across Australia, completing around 100 flights per day. Many remote Aboriginal communities and isolated cattle stations rely entirely on the Flying Doctor for medical care. The service is famous worldwide as a model for delivering healthcare to remote populations and has inspired similar services in other countries.
The Outback has always been prone to extreme droughts, but climate change is making them worse. The Millennium Drought (roughly 1997 to 2009) was the worst drought on record for southeastern Australia and devastated farming communities. The 2017 to 2020 drought brought record temperatures and massive bushfires (the "Black Summer" fires of 2019 to 2020 burned over 18 million hectares of bushland, killed an estimated 1 billion animals and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people). Many small Outback towns have lost population as farming becomes harder, and the changing climate raises serious questions about the long-term viability of agriculture in some areas.
The country is Australia. For other named deserts in the Outback, see the Great Victoria and Great Sandy deserts.