More regular riding, on horseback, is offered all over the country – anything from a gentle hour at walking pace to a serious cattle roundup. Cycling and mountain biking are tremendously popular too, as well as being a good way of getting around resorts; many hostels rent out bikes.
Australia’s wilderness is an ideal venue for extended off-road driving or dirt-bike riding, although permission may be needed to cross station- and Aboriginal-owned lands, and the fragile desert ecology should be respected at all times. Northern Queensland’s Cape York and WA’s Kimberley are the most adventurous destinations, 4WD-accessible in the dry season only.
The Great Remote Outback 4wd Tracks pushed out by explorers or drovers, such as the Gunbarrel and Sandover highways and the Tanami, Birdsville and Oodnadatta tracks, are technically mostly two-wheel driveable in dry conditions, but can be hard on poorly prepared vehicles; only WA’s two-thousand-kilometre Canning Stock Route demands a 4WD and an enormous fuel range, effectively ruling out motorbikes.
Finally, you may not associate Australia with skiing, but there’s plenty of it in the 1500-metre-high Australian Alps on the border of Victoria and New South Wales, based around the winter resorts of Thredbo, Mount Hotham and Perisher. Europeans tend to be sniffy about Australian skiing, and certainly it’s limited, with a season that lasts barely two months – July and August – and very few challenging runs. The one area where it does match up to Europe is in the prices. On the other hand it’s fun if you’re here, and the relatively gentle slopes of the mountains are ideal for cross-country skiing, which is increasingly being developed alongside downhill.
As with any wilderness area, the Australian interior does not suffer fools, and the coast conceals dangers too: sunstroke and dehydration are risks everywhere, with riptides, currents and unexpected king waves to be wary of on exposed coasts. In the more remote regions isolation and lack of surface water compromise energetic outdoor activities such as bushwalking or mountain biking, which are probably better indulged in the cooler climes and more populated locations of the south.