Qualla: Adventure Way

Adventure Way: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The bitumen ends somewhere past Thargomindah, and that is rather the point. The Adventure Way is a road designed to deliver you to the edge of the settled world: 1,152 kilometres from the suburbs of Brisbane to the dusty crossroads of Innamincka, just over the South Australian border. The Queensland Government markets it as a State Strategic Touring Route, which is a bureaucratic way of saying it strings together the country's best excuses to keep driving. Allow four days, the official advice runs, and ninety-six hours of recommended journey time tells you everything: this is not a road to hurry down. It is a road to be crossed slowly, town by town, as the green coast falls away behind you and the red interior opens ahead.

Read more: Adventure Way on Qualla

Adventure Way: From Range to Plain

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The route begins in earnest on the Warrego Highway, climbing the Great Dividing Range to Toowoomba before dropping onto the Darling Downs at Dalby. From there it threads southwest through St George and Cunnamulla on a sequence of highways and developmental roads, each leg longer ...

Read more: Adventure Way on Qualla

Adventure Way: The Far South-West

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Beyond Cunnamulla the road enters the Channel Country, a land of braided rivers, gibber plains and floodplains that turn briefly emerald after rain. Thargomindah, once home to one of the first hydroelectric street-lighting systems in the southern hemisphere, marks the last real t...

Read more: Adventure Way on Qualla

Adventure Way: Where the Story Ends

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The route's destination is Innamincka and the Cooper Creek country, ground soaked in the memory of the Burke and Wills expedition. It was near here, in 1861, that the explorers died of starvation after missing their relief party by hours, and the lone coolabah known as the Dig Tr...

Read more: Adventure Way on Qualla

Adventure Way: Country Older Than the Road

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Long before any highway, this corridor was Aboriginal country, crossed by trading and travelling routes that the explorers themselves often followed. The Kullilli people, traditional owners of the Bulloo and Wilson River lands around Thargomindah, walked these floodplains for tho...

Read more: Adventure Way on Qualla