Where to walk
The best day hikes in Australia, state by state
By Aus Trails · Reviewed against the current app.
Most “best hikes” lists are the same twelve photographs in a different order. This one is picked from the 481 tracks mapped in Aus Trails using the numbers attached to each: distance, total ascent and grade. The brief was a walk you can finish in a day, that asks something of you, and that is worth driving to — one per state and territory, with the real figures so you can judge it against your own legs rather than against a photograph.
What counts as a day hike
The working definition here is 6 to 20 kilometres at a moderate or hard grade. Sixty-nine of the 481 mapped tracks fall inside it. Below six kilometres you are generally looking at a lookout walk, which can be lovely and is a different kind of outing; above twenty you are into country where daylight becomes the binding constraint rather than fitness.
Grade matters more than distance for how a day actually feels. A nine-kilometre walk with 800 metres of climbing is a harder day than a fifteen-kilometre flat one, and the elevation profile on each trail page is the fastest way to see which you are looking at. Australia’s park services largely use the AWTGS five-point scale on signage — if you are unsure what a number on a signpost is promising, the grades guide explains it.
Queensland — Mount Mitchell Track
9.68 km, hard, and 799 metres of ascent in Main Range National Park, which is the steepest climb per kilometre of any day walk in the catalogue. The range here is the eroded rim of an old shield volcano and the track does not spend long pretending otherwise.
Main Range sits far enough inland that the weather is its own event. This is a cold, exposed walk in winter and an unpleasant one in summer afternoon heat, and neither fact appears on a photograph of the view.
New South Wales — Wollumbin (Mount Warning) summit track
9.96 km, moderate, 413 metres of climb in Wollumbin National Park. The peak is the central plug of the Tweed volcano and the walk is the classic of the Northern Rivers.
Worth knowing before you plan it: Wollumbin is a site of deep cultural significance to the Bundjalung people and access arrangements have changed. Check the park’s current notices before you drive, which is good practice everywhere and essential here.
Victoria — Werribee Gorge Circuit Walk
6.76 km, moderate, 338 metres of ascent in Werribee Gorge State Park, close enough to Melbourne to be an ordinary Saturday and rugged enough not to feel like one. There is rock scrambling and a cable-assisted section along the river.
It is the wrong walk in wet weather. The scrambling sections are the whole character of the route and they change completely when the rock is slick.
Tasmania — Mount Rufus Circuit
11.55 km, hard, 486 metres of climb from the Lake St Clair end of Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park. It is the quieter alternative to the tracks at the Cradle Valley end and it crosses genuinely alpine country.
Tasmanian alpine weather is the real planning problem rather than the distance. Snow is possible outside winter, visibility closes in fast, and the parts of this route above the treeline are exposed. Carry for the day you might get.
Western Australia — Bald Head Walk Trail
12.28 km, moderate, 579 metres of cumulative ascent along a narrow granite peninsula in Torndirrup National Park near Albany, with the Southern Ocean on both sides for most of it.
The exposure is the thing to plan for. There is almost no shade and the wind off the Southern Ocean is not a figure of speech — it is a return walk, so turning back early is always available and sometimes correct.
South Australia — Mount Remarkable Summit Hike
12.82 km, hard, 678 metres of ascent in Mount Remarkable National Park in the southern Flinders Ranges. South Australia is the best-mapped state in this catalogue with 167 tracks, and this is the one that asks the most of a day.
Flinders heat is the constraint. This is a cool-season walk, and water is something you carry rather than something you find.
Northern Territory — Barrk Sandstone Walk
8.39 km, hard, in Kakadu National Park, climbing the Nourlangie escarpment through sandstone country rather than running the flat valley routes most visitors see.
Season decides everything in the Top End. Many Kakadu walks close or become unsafe in the wet, and the heat during the day is a genuine hazard rather than a discomfort. Check park notices and start at first light.
ACT — Granite Tors
8.8 km, hard, 416 metres of ascent in Namadgi National Park, which is the serious walking country attached to Canberra. Nineteen tracks sit within an hour of the city and nine of them are in Namadgi.
Alpine conditions apply here too. Namadgi is cold and exposed well outside winter, and the drive out means fewer people around if a day goes wrong.
Before you drive to any of them
Every one of these is far enough from a city that mobile coverage disappears before the car park. Download the offline area while you still have signal and open the individual trail page so the route itself caches, not just the surrounding map tiles — they are separate resources and the distinction catches people out at the trailhead.
Check the park’s own current notices for closures, fire danger and track work. A mapped route is a record of where a track goes, not a statement that it is open today.
- Open the trail page and read the elevation profile, not only the distance.
- Download the offline area for the region while connected.
- Open the trail itself online so its route geometry caches.
- Check the park service’s current alerts on the morning you go.