The best motorcycle touring routes in Australia

Australia might be the single best country in the world for a motorcycle trip, and I say that as someone who’s ridden in a handful of others. The combination of long, quiet roads, dramatic landscape changes within a single day’s ride, and a genuine biking culture in almost every regional town means you’re rarely more than an hour from a decent pub that knows exactly how to look after a rider who’s just come off a long stretch of highway.

What surprised me most the first time I toured here wasn’t the scenery, spectacular as it is — it was how much the riding itself varies. A single week can take you from tight, technical mountain switchbacks to dead-straight outback roads where the horizon doesn’t change for two hours at a time, and both experiences are worth having.

This list covers the routes worth building a proper trip around, whether you’ve got a weekend or two full weeks.

📋 TL;DR — the quick version

• 🏔️ Great Alpine Road, Victoria: Australia’s best technical mountain riding, tight corners and big elevation changes.
• 🌊 Great Ocean Road, Victoria: The famous coastal route, best ridden early morning before the traffic.
• 🐊 Savannah Way, Northern Territory to Queensland: Genuine outback adventure riding across the Top End.
• 🍇 Adelaide Hills loop, South Australia: Underrated, tight corners through vineyard country.
• 🏜️ Stuart Highway, Northern Territory to South Australia: The ultimate long-haul outback endurance ride.
• 🌴 Cape Tribulation road, Queensland: Tropical rainforest riding at the very top of the east coast.
• 💡 Tip: Carry a paper map or offline GPS — mobile coverage disappears completely on several of these routes.

🏔️ Great Alpine Road, Victoria

The Great Alpine Road running through Victoria’s high country is widely considered the best technical riding in the country, and once you’ve ridden it, it’s hard to argue. The route climbs from Wangaratta through Bright and Mount Hotham before descending to Omeo and Bairnsdale, with corner after corner of genuinely well-surfaced mountain road.

The elevation changes are dramatic — you’ll go from warm valley farmland to near-freezing alpine air within the space of an hour’s ride, which makes proper layered gear essential even in summer.

🎯 Making the most of it

1. Ride it in autumn. The alpine foliage colour is genuinely spectacular and the roads are quieter than peak summer.
2. Base yourself in Bright. A genuine motorcycle-friendly town with accommodation that understands what riders need.
3. Check road conditions before winter trips. Sections can close entirely with snow, and black ice is a real risk in shoulder season.

👉 Book a Victorian High Country Day Tour on GetYourGuide →

🌊 Great Ocean Road, Victoria

The Great Ocean Road’s fame means it’s also one of the most heavily trafficked tourist routes in the country, which can dull the experience on a bike if you hit it at the wrong time. Ride it early on a weekday morning, though, and you’ll get long stretches of clear coastal road with sweeping ocean views and the Twelve Apostles limestone stacks rising out of the water.

The road itself rewards patience rather than speed — it’s a route for enjoying the scenery, not chasing lean angles, and trying to ride it fast just means missing the point entirely.

• Ride early or off-season. Coach traffic builds through the day and peaks over summer holidays.
• Stop often. The lookouts along this route are genuinely worth the time, not just photo-op detours.
• Combine with the Great Alpine Road. Both are within a manageable multi-day loop from Melbourne.

🐊 Savannah Way, Northern Territory to Queensland

The Savannah Way is a genuine outback adventure route, running from Katherine in the Northern Territory across to Cairns in Queensland through some of the most remote country on the continent. This isn’t a road for a first motorcycle trip — expect long unsealed sections, extreme heat, and stretches where the next fuel stop is genuinely a concern rather than a formality.

The reward for that difficulty is riding through landscape most travellers never see: ancient gorges, crocodile-inhabited rivers, and a version of the Top End that the standard tourist trail completely misses.

🏜️ What to prepare for

1. Adventure or dual-sport bike recommended. Standard road bikes will struggle on the unsealed sections.
2. Carry extra fuel and water. Some stretches between fuel stops genuinely exceed a standard tank range.
3. Travel in the dry season. Wet season flooding can close entire sections for weeks at a time.

🍇 Adelaide Hills loop, South Australia

The Adelaide Hills don’t get anywhere near the attention of Victoria’s alpine routes, and riders who know the area tend to keep it that way. Tight, technical roads wind through vineyard country and old-growth forest, all within half an hour of Adelaide’s CBD, making this one of the most accessible genuinely good rides in the country.

It’s a route you can comfortably ride in half a day, stopping at a cellar door or two along the way, which makes it perfect for riders who want serious corners without committing to a multi-day trip.

• Genuinely technical riding. Tight, well-surfaced roads that reward smooth technique.
• Easy Adelaide access. No need for a big multi-day commitment to enjoy quality riding here.
• Wine stops built in. Several cellar doors along the route are genuinely worth the detour, even on two wheels.

👉 Book a South Australia Wine Region Tour on GetYourGuide →

🏜️ Stuart Highway, Northern Territory to South Australia

The Stuart Highway runs the full length of the continent from Darwin to Adelaide, and riding it in one push is more of an endurance challenge than a scenic tour. Most riders break it into a multi-day trip, but even split up, this is a genuinely different experience from anything else on this list — hours of dead-straight road through genuine desert, punctuated by roadhouses that feel like the last outposts of civilisation.

There’s a specific kind of mental clarity that comes from hours of straight-line outback riding that mountain roads simply can’t offer. It’s less about the corners and more about the sheer scale of the country becoming genuinely tangible under your own power.

🛣️ Planning the long haul

1. Watch for wildlife at dawn and dusk. Kangaroo strikes are a genuine and serious risk during these hours.
2. Plan fuel stops carefully. Roadhouses are spaced widely, and running dry in extreme heat is a real danger.
3. Stay hydrated beyond what feels necessary. The dry heat dehydrates riders faster than they usually realise.

🌴 Cape Tribulation road, Queensland

North of Cairns, the road to Cape Tribulation takes you through the Daintree Rainforest, one of the oldest continuously surviving rainforests on Earth, on a route where the jungle genuinely presses in against the road on both sides. It’s a short ride compared to the others on this list, but the tropical immersion is unlike anywhere else in the country.

Humidity and sudden tropical downpours are a genuine factor here even in the dry season, so this is a route that rewards riders who’ve packed proper wet-weather gear rather than assuming Queensland means guaranteed sunshine.

• Genuine rainforest immersion. Unlike any other landscape on this list.
• Ferry crossing required. The Daintree River crossing adds a bit of adventure to the route itself.
• Pack for sudden rain. Tropical downpours can appear with little warning, even outside wet season.

👉 Book a Daintree Rainforest Day Tour on GetYourGuide →

🍁 Tasmania’s back roads

Tasmania deserves its own entry rather than a footnote, because pound for pound it might be the best all-round riding state in the country. The island’s compact size means you can string together a huge variety of road types in a single day — tight forest switchbacks, exposed coastal stretches, and quiet farmland roads — without the enormous distances the mainland often demands.

Roads like the Great Eastern Drive along the east coast and the mountain routes around Cradle Mountain offer genuinely world-class riding, and Tasmania’s low traffic density means you’ll often have long stretches entirely to yourself, even on routes that would be crowded with tourist traffic on the mainland.

• Huge variety in a small area. Coastal, mountain, and forest riding all within reach of each other.
• Low traffic density. Even popular routes feel quiet compared to mainland equivalents.
• Unpredictable weather. Pack for four seasons in a single day, regardless of the forecast.

🏁 The culture that makes it work

Part of what makes touring Australia by motorcycle so good isn’t just the roads themselves but the infrastructure and culture built up around them over decades. Country pubs in genuinely tiny towns often have designated bike parking right out front, publicans who’ll happily point you toward the best local roads, and a general assumption that riders passing through are welcome rather than a novelty.

This partly comes down to how deeply embedded motorcycling is in rural Australian life — plenty of farmers and rural workers ride as a matter of practicality, not just recreation, which means the culture around bikes in the country is less about spectacle and more about genuine familiarity. Riders touring through regional Australia are generally treated as just another traveller passing through, not a curiosity, and that welcoming, unfussy attitude is a genuine part of what makes the riding here so enjoyable.

🛠️ Preparing for an Australian motorcycle trip

A few things worth sorting before setting off on any multi-day route here.

• 🦘 Take kangaroo warnings seriously. Avoid riding at dawn, dusk, or after dark in rural areas wherever possible — collisions are genuinely common and often fatal for riders.
• 🗺️ Download offline maps before you leave town. Mobile coverage vanishes completely across large stretches of outback Australia.
• 🧴 Sun protection matters more than you’d think. Australian UV is genuinely intense, and hours of riding exposes skin more than most people account for.
• 🔧 Carry basic repair tools. The nearest mechanic can be hours away on the more remote routes.
• 🏨 Book accommodation ahead in peak season. Small regional towns have limited beds, and popular riding routes fill up fast during school holidays.

👉 Book a NSW Motorcycle-Friendly Day Trip on GetYourGuide →

🏍️ Which route to prioritise

If you want the best technical riding with the least logistical difficulty, the Great Alpine Road delivers the most reward for the least risk, and Bright makes an excellent base for exploring the wider region. If you’re after a genuine adventure and have the experience to handle it, the Savannah Way offers something few riders anywhere in the world get to experience.

And if you’ve only got a weekend and want maximum quality riding for minimum planning, the Adelaide Hills loop punches well above its modest length, delivering genuinely excellent corners within easy reach of a major city.

Whichever route you choose, build in more time than you think you need. Australia has a way of making distances feel shorter on a map than they are on the road, and rushing any of these routes means missing the exact thing that makes them worth riding in the first place.

And don’t underestimate how much a good conversation at a roadside pub can shape a trip. Some of the best detours I’ve taken in this country came from a five-minute chat with a local who insisted a particular back road, one that never showed up in any guide, was worth the extra hour. More often than not, they were right, and that’s a kind of route planning no amount of research beforehand can fully replace.