Great Australian Drives

In many ways, Australia is an ideal country for driving. Yes, there is the driving-on-the-left thing, which spooks some people who've never done it before, but in all honesty, you get past that in about ten minutes.

What really makes the country ripe for roadsters is the fact that there are so many places to get away from it all yet remain on good roads, with plenty of gas stations, and in range of half a dozen nice motels to crash in. The movies are big on depicting Australia as a place where to get anywhere, you need a four-by-four, a cauldron of fresh water, and six spare tires. But in point of fact, all the country's cities are linked by roads you can do in a plain old rental car. You don't need equipment that's much more involved than a Coke and a bag of cookies (I suggest a pack of Tim Tams).

Here are four great drives in four different areas, and what makes them so great:

The Great Ocean Road
An hour out of Melbourne, this dramatic coastal road meanders along cliffs and through seaside towns before passing the dramatic Twelve Apostles. Farther on, it goes through the Tower Hill game reserve, where you can spot kangaroos and koalas like you're on an African safari, and then it pulls into adorable villages like Port Fairy. You can do the highlights in an overnight trip, but a more sensible itinerary would last four or five days.

The Stuart Highway
Over three to five days, the paved road beelines between Darwin and Alice Springs. The area around Darwin is all about crocodiles ( Kakadu National Park) and gorges (Katherine), but the views soon turn into the sort of outback adventure you've only seen on TV. There are ghost towns, rustic outback pubs, and plenty of stretches where you can get out of your car, shout into the wind, and hear nothing in reply. And there's no speed limit in the Northern Territory outback.

Tall Timber Country
A few hours south of Perth, the land looks like something out of a storybook. For miles upon mile through green, rolling country, the trees grow thick as houses and two hundred feet tall. Locals pull giant cobalt-blue crawfish out of the streams and boil them for supper. Eventually, the forests taper off and the sight of furiously crashing surf appears, leading you through old whaling towns and newly resettled artist's hamlets. This is Australia?

The Blue Mountains
Sydney 's most well-known driving detour is about an hour west of town. The mountains are actually a complicated honeycomb of eucalyptus-rich canyons, and the road hops from small town to small town. On the cliffs' brims, historic resort hotels soak in the view. Believe it or not, botanists are still locating unknown species in the forests.

One thing not to do: Do too much. Type A Americans like us commonly assume we can cross Australia they way we would the United States—for example, doing Brisbane to Sydney in a day. It's a mistake. Sure, it's possible, but remember that the pleasure of a driving tour is usually in what you see when you stop, so leave plenty of time for dawdling, otherwise it won't be fun. If you don't have time, you can always leave it for your next trip. If the unseen bits of the country don't lure you back, the Tim Tams definitely will.


Who is Jason Cochrane?
Jason Cochran has written on travel and entertainment for publications including Entertainment Weekly, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, Newsweek, theNew York Daily News, the Rough Guides, Travel + Leisure, the Village Voice, the New York Post, Marie Claire, Inside, New York Sidewalk, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Arena (U.K.), Who (Australia), Scanorama, and Seasons (Sweden). He also devised questions for the first American season of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (ABC) and before that, spent nearly two years backpacking solo around the world. As a commentator, he has appeared on CNN, CNN Headline News, CNNfn, Fox TV, and MSNBC.com. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and New York University's Graduate Music Theatre Writing Program. He lives in Manhattan.