Australia 's Outback is vast. It covers more than three-quarters of the continent of Australia —2.2 million square miles of land—and is about the size of the forty-eight mainland U.S. states. Geographically, the Outback branches out in all directions from the heart of Australia, and it is cradled to the east and west by the highly populated eastern and southwestern coastal regions.

The Outback is generally characterized as dry, harsh, unyielding, and even hostile. Popular images of the Outback include red dirt tracks merging into endless vistas of open country, scorching temperatures, whirling dust storms, and devastating drought. These images seem fitting because Australia is the oldest, driest, flattest, and most infertile of all inhabited continents on Earth. However, such descriptions of the Outback are too confining; it is in fact a land of great diversity.

Land of Many Contrasts