1,200km, Seven Towns and a Hell of a Soundtrack: The Outback Trail Returns

Forget the tour bus. This time, you're the one going on tour. QLD Music Trails is heading back into Outback Queensland

in 2027 for 1,200 kilometres of big skies, small towns, country music and one very long road west.

There are road trips, and then there's driving from Charleville to Mount Isa with a string of live music shows waiting for you along the way.

From May 8–22, QLD Music Trails: The Outback returns for its fifth year, connecting seven Queensland communities across a 1,200km self-drive journey through Charleville, Blackall, Barcaldine, Longreach, Winton, Julia Creek and Mount Isa.

The idea is beautifully simple.Pack the car. Or the caravan. Or the 4WD. Point it west. And follow the music. The road is the venue

Most festivals ask you to find a stage. The Outback Trail turns an entire stretch of Queensland into one.

Over two weeks, travellers move from town to town, with each stop bringing its own event, landscape and reason to hang around for a while.

It starts in Charleville with Saddle Up on May 8 before heading north to Blackall for a proper Blackall Bush Dance.

Barcaldine hosts the Outback Exchange, Longreach gets Dusty Days, Winton offers Diamonds in the Dust, and Julia Creek slows things down with Dinner Under the Stars.

Then, 1,200 kilometres after setting out from Charleville, the road finishes in Mount Isa with Outback Sounds on May 22.

Seven towns. Seven events. A lot of country in between. 

A hundred years of Slim One stop in particular is shaping up to be something special. At the Qantas Founders Museum in Longreach, Troy Cassar-Daley will headline Dusty Dayson May 14.

The year 2027 would have marked the 100th birthday of Slim Dusty, and the Longreach event will use the occasion to celebrate not only the man himself, but the bigger story of Australian country music — where it's been, where it is now and where it might be heading next.

There's something fitting about celebrating Slim Dusty out there. His songs were filled with roads, towns, characters and places far removed from Australia's capital cities. A century after his birth, those roads and towns are still there.