Darling Downs

Pull over on any back road out here and take it in — the sky goes on forever, the plains stretch flat to the horizon and the air carries the smell of red soil after rain. The Darling Downs is quintessential Queensland before the coast hijacks the conversation, a vast and productive basin of black-soil farmland framed by the Great Dividing Range.

Toowoomba earns its title as the Garden City — a graceful inland city perched on the Great Dividing Range with heritage buildings, Australia's largest inland street festival (Carnival of Flowers, September), and a food scene that surprises most visitors. From here the land drops dramatically to the west, the Lockyer Valley and the plains below dotted with sunflower crops in season.

The camping here rewards those who slow down: creek-side spots in the Condamine River country, Bunya Mountains National Park to the north (ancient Bunya pines that fed generations of Aboriginal nations), and the excellent free camping along the Darling Downs outback drives. This is road-trip Australia in its most honest form — wide, generous and utterly without pretension.