Australia's best motorcycle roads fall into four groups: the Victorian coast and alps, the New South Wales high country and Illawarra escarpment, the Nullarbor crossing between Western Australia and South Australia, and Tasmania. The headline rides are the Great Ocean Road at 240 km, the Great Alpine Road at 304 km with a 1,840 m summit, the Alpine Way over Dead Horse Gap at 1,580 m, the 1,664 km Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor, and the Tasmanian loop. Three things shape every one of them: wildlife, distance between fuel, and heat. Verified August 2026.
What makes riding in Australia different
Riders arriving from Europe or North America usually recalibrate three things in the first week.
Wildlife is a primary hazard, not a footnote. Kangaroos are the species most commonly struck and killed by vehicles in Australia, and dusk and dawn are the times of highest collision risk. Wombats are the other frequent casualty, and in specific regions you add wallabies, feral horses, deer, dingoes and stock. The advice given for large animals everywhere applies here: slow in lane if you can, and avoid the sudden swerve, because losing control while avoiding an animal injures more people than the impact does. On a motorcycle the only reliable mitigation is scheduling. Ride between mid-morning and late afternoon and accept that this shortens your day.
Distance between services is a design constraint. On the Eyre Highway, roadhouses are the only settlements across a 720 km stretch of Western Australia and they sit 65 to 180 km apart. That single fact dictates which bikes are practical and how you plan every day. Even in the alps, the leg from Bright over Mount Hotham to Omeo has no reliable fuel in between.
Heat is a rider problem before it is a bike problem. Summer days on the Nullarbor approach 50 °C (122 °F), and the record of 49.9 °C at Nullarbor in South Australia is the fourth hottest ever recorded in the country. There is no shade to stop in. Meanwhile the same continent has alpine roads with a legal snow-chain requirement.
And remember that the seasons are inverted. Summer is December to February, winter is June to August, and the alpine snow-chain rules apply in the middle of the calendar year rather than at its ends.
Top roads
| Road | Distance | Character | Start and finish |
|---|---|---|---|
| Great Ocean Road, Victoria | 240 km (149 mi) | Coastal cliffs, Otways rainforest, Twelve Apostles; signed B100 | Torquay to Allansford |
| Great Alpine Road, Victoria | 304 km (189 mi) | Australia's highest year-round sealed road, 1,840 m at Mount Hotham; B500 | Wangaratta to Bairnsdale |
| Alpine Way, New South Wales | 121 km (75 mi) | Dead Horse Gap at 1,580 m, then 1,000 m of descent to Murray Gorge | Jindabyne to the Victorian border |
| Kosciuszko Road, New South Wales | 95 km (59 mi) | Open alpine country to the end of the tarmac at Charlotte Pass | Pine Valley near Cooma to Charlotte Pass |
| Snowy Mountains Highway, NSW | 333 km (207 mi) | Coast to inland via the high country and Yarrangobilly; signed B72 | Princes Highway to Hume Highway |
| Eyre Highway, WA and SA | 1,664 km (1,034 mi) | The Nullarbor crossing, including the 146.6 km 90 Mile Straight | Norseman to Port Augusta |
| Grand Pacific Drive, NSW | 140 km (87 mi) | Royal National Park, escarpment and the Sea Cliff Bridge | Royal National Park to Nowra |
| Tasman Highway, Tasmania | 410 km (255 mi) | East and north-east coast, Bay of Fires, forest corners; signed A3 | Hobart to Launceston |
| Lyell Highway, Tasmania | 248 km (154 mi) | Central Highlands, wild rivers country, the descent into Queenstown; A10 | Hobart to Queenstown |
Open the Great Ocean Road in Google Maps — Torquay, Apollo Bay, Port Campbell, Allansford, the single best introduction to riding in this country if you only have one day.
Victoria, the coast and the alps
Victoria holds the two roads most visitors have heard of, and they are deliberately paired: the Great Alpine Road was given its name because it was considered the mountain equivalent of the Great Ocean Road.
The Great Ocean Road runs 240 km from Torquay to Allansford, signed B100 since 1996. It was built between 1919 and 1932 by around 3,000 returned servicemen as a memorial to those killed in the First World War, which makes it the world's largest war memorial, and it joined the Australian National Heritage List in 2011. It has three distinct sections — the coastal Surf Coast run east of the Otways, the cool rainforest climb through Lavers Hill, and the Shipwreck Coast past the Twelve Apostles — and the traffic is heavy enough that when you ride it matters as much as whether.
The Great Alpine Road covers 304 km from Wangaratta to Bairnsdale as B500, and the Mount Hotham section reaches 1,840 m (6,040 ft), making it Australia's highest year-round accessible sealed road. It normally stays open through winter with daily snow clearance, but vehicles between Harrietville and Omeo must carry diamond-pattern snow chains during the declared snow season, which effectively closes the crossing to motorcycles for those months. The final 12 km of the route was sealed only in the 1997–98 financial year.
New South Wales, high country and escarpment
The Snowy Mountains hold three roads worth planning around. The Alpine Way runs 121 km from Jindabyne to the Victorian border, crossing the crest of the Great Dividing Range at Dead Horse Gap at 1,580 m before descending a thousand metres to Murray Gorge at 580 m — that descent is the best sustained motorcycling in the region. It was built in the 1950s as construction access for the Snowy Mountains Scheme and was not fully paved until the 1990s. Kosciuszko Road covers 95 km from Pine Valley near Cooma to Charlotte Pass, and it is worth knowing before you go that you cannot ride to the summit of Mount Kosciuszko: the last nine kilometres have long been closed to public vehicles. The Snowy Mountains Highway adds 333 km of B72 across the range, with distinctive yellow lane markings and tall red reflector posts on the high sections because normal delineation gets buried by snow.
Two practical points specific to this region. Kosciuszko National Park charges a vehicle entry fee per day with a lower motorcycle rate and a higher winter peak period, and two-wheel-drive vehicles must carry snow chains on the Alpine Way between Thredbo and Tom Groggin, and inside the park on Kosciuszko Road, from the June long weekend to the October long weekend. The park also holds a substantial population of brumbies, and a horse on a narrow road at dusk is a serious collision.
Closer to Sydney, the Grand Pacific Drive runs 140 km from the Royal National Park to Nowra. Its famous section is short — the Sea Cliff Bridge is 455.6 m long and sits 41 m above the sea, built to bypass a stretch of Lawrence Hargrave Drive that was permanently closed in August 2003 after repeated rock falls. Ride it as part of a loop with the Royal National Park roads and the escarpment climbs behind Wollongong rather than as a destination in itself.
The Nullarbor, the crossing everyone talks about
The Eyre Highway is 1,664 km from Norseman in Western Australia to Port Augusta in South Australia and is the only sealed road linking the two states. About 1,200 km of that runs across the Nullarbor Plain, which is the world's largest single exposure of limestone bedrock at around 200,000 km², flat and almost treeless. The road includes the 90 Mile Straight between Balladonia and Caiguna, 146.6 km (91.1 miles) without a bend, which is the longest straight stretch of road in Australia and one of the longest in the world.
What makes it a serious undertaking rather than a long boring day is the isolation. Roadhouses are the only settlements across 720 km of Western Australia and are 65 to 180 km apart. Some widened sections of the highway serve as signposted emergency airstrips for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, complete with painted runway markings — which tells you how far you are from a hospital. Road trains up to 42.5 m long share the two-lane carriageway at 110 km/h. Summer heat is genuinely dangerous, and winter nights on the plain drop below freezing. Ride it in spring or autumn.
Tasmania, the best corners in the country
Tasmania is 68,402 km² with about 42 per cent of the land area in reserves, and it packs more corners per hundred kilometres than anywhere on the mainland. A lap is built around two highways. The Tasman Highway covers 410 km of A3 from Hobart to Launceston by way of the east and north-east coasts, taking in the Bay of Fires and the forest run through Weldborough and Pyengana. The Lyell Highway covers 248 km of A10 west from Hobart through the Central Highlands and the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park to Queenstown, finishing with a dense sequence of tight bends down into a town surrounded by bare pink and grey conglomerate hills.
Getting a bike there means the Spirit of Tasmania, a roll-on roll-off ferry crossing 242 nautical miles (448 km) between Geelong and Devonport in nine to eleven hours, usually overnight. Ride it December to March: the Central Highlands section of the Lyell Highway is prone to black ice in winter, and snow at Derwent Bridge can close the road for days most years.
Gear notes for a continent with long gaps
Almost every route above has stretches with no usable mobile data — the Otways, the Hotham crossing, the Alpine Way descent, most of the Nullarbor and much of western Tasmania. A navigation setup that streams its maps stops being navigation exactly where the decisions get harder, so download before you leave the last town with coverage. Our guide to choosing a motorcycle GPS setup covers what offline capability really means, and a JADO S6 riding system keeps the route and the cameras on one display so a phone never comes out in dust, glare or rain.
Tyres deserve more attention here than in most countries, because the consequences of a slow leak scale with the distance to the next town. Heat raises pressure and cold alpine air drops it, and on the Nullarbor the nearest tyre shop can be several hundred kilometres away. Our motorcycle tire pressure guide covers what to run, and a TPMS sensor gives you warning while you can still reach help. Power is the third recurring gap: on the long remote legs there are no sockets at all, and a bi-directional fast charger that draws from the bike and feeds a phone or camera keeps your only communication device alive. Finally, because so much Australian riding is constrained by animal activity at dawn and dusk, low-light visibility for riders is the piece to read before you plan your daily distances.
FAQ
What is the best motorcycle road in Australia?
For sustained corners, Tasmania — the Tasman Highway through the north-east forests and the Lyell Highway descent into Queenstown. For a single famous ride, the Great Ocean Road. For altitude and a road that feels like a mountain pass, the Great Alpine Road over Mount Hotham.
When should you ride in Australia?
It depends on the region, and the seasons are inverted. The alpine roads in Victoria and New South Wales are best from roughly November to April, outside the declared snow seasons. Tasmania is best December to March. The Nullarbor is best in spring and autumn, avoiding both the summer heat and the freezing winter nights.
How dangerous is wildlife on Australian roads?
Serious enough to plan around. Kangaroos are the animal most commonly hit and killed by vehicles nationally, and dusk and dawn are the peak risk hours. Tasmania and the alpine parks are worse than average because forest and bushland run right to the road edge. Riding in full daylight is the single most effective countermeasure.
Do you need a special licence or permits?
Visitors generally ride on their existing licence with an international permit where required, but national parks are a separate matter. Kosciuszko National Park charges a vehicle entry fee with a lower motorcycle rate, and Tasmania requires a parks pass for vehicles entering its national parks. Check the current terms with the relevant park service, since rates change.
What range does a bike need for Australian touring?
On the coast and in the alps, 200 km is comfortable. For the Nullarbor, plan around the published 180 km maximum gap between roadhouses and add margin for headwinds and closed pumps, which puts a real-world 250 km range in the sensible zone.
