The 10 Most Breathtaking Natural Wonders in Australia

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, stretching 2,300 kilometres along the Queensland coast and visible from space.

Home to over 1,500 species of fish, 4,000 types of mollusc, and 600 types of coral, it is the largest living structure on earth and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Uluru is a 348-metre monolith of rust-red sandstone rising sheer out of the Central Australian desert, sacred to the Anangu people.

It performs twice daily, smouldering orange at dawn and deepening to violet after sunset, and the colour show alone justifies the pilgrimage.

Up close, the base walk reveals waterholes, rock art and lush pockets of desert life.

The Twelve Apostles are a collection of limestone stacks rising up to 45 metres from the Southern Ocean off the Port Campbell National Park on the Great Ocean Road.

Carved from the cliffs by erosion over millennia, they are most spectacular at sunrise and sunset when the low light turns the limestone golden.

Turquoise Bay sits inside Ningaloo Marine Park, one of the few places on earth where a fringing coral reef comes close enough to shore to snorkel directly from the beach, no boat required.

Its signature "drift snorkel" lets swimmers enter up-current and float down the reef edge past coral and fish without swimming against the current.

Remote and undeveloped, it rewards the long drive up Australia's northwest coast.

Kings Canyon slices through the Watarrka range with sheer 100-metre sandstone walls, best seen on the Rim Walk, a 6-kilometre loop across a domed rock landscape locals call the "Lost City.

" A steep climb, nicknamed "Heart Attack Hill," leads onto the rim, passing the Garden of Eden, a permanent waterhole shaded by palms.

It's a serious outback hike best done at first light.

Kakadu is Australia's largest national park, a vast expanse of wetlands, escarpments, and monsoon forest that's also home to some of the world's oldest continuously used rock art, some over 20,000 years old.

Ubirr and Nourlangie hold galleries of Aboriginal paintings alongside lookouts across floodplains where saltwater crocodiles are a constant presence.

The park floods heavily in the wet season, so much is only reachable in the dry months.

Named after the Afghan cameleers who once helped open up Australia's interior, The Ghan runs nearly 3,000km from Darwin to Adelaide through the dead centre of the continent, crossing the red desert around Alice Springs and Uluru's outback region over two to three days.

Off-train excursions into the MacDonnell Ranges and Katherine Gorge break up the journey.

A sailing cruise through 74 islands scattered across the Great Barrier Reef's inner waters, anchoring off Whitehaven Beach's swirling silica sand and turquoise shallows.

Days mix snorkelling on fringing reefs, a walk up to the Hill Inlet lookout, and sunset drinks at anchor.

Multi-day catamaran and yacht trips are the standard way to see the outer islands, since most are uninhabited.

Conditions stay calm and tropical almost year-round.

A vast field of parallel red sand dunes stretching across central Australia's outback, crossed by one of the country's classic 4x4 adventure routes via the notoriously steep Big Red dune outside Birdsville.

The dunes run in improbably straight lines for hundreds of kilometres, turning deep crimson at sunset against a sky with almost zero light pollution.

Crossing it is a genuine expedition, not a casual day out - self-sufficiency and proper 4x4 preparation are essential.

An hour from Adelaide, the Barossa Valley is home to some of the world's oldest continuously producing Shiraz vines, some planted in the 1840s by German and Silesian settlers who brought Lutheran church architecture and winemaking traditions that still shape the valley's small towns.

Historic stone wineries give the region a rustic, unhurried character.