New South Wales & the ACT

Australia’s Best Nature Road Trips

The best nature road trips in New South Wales & the ACT: 8 routes ranked

1	Grand Pacific Drive	NSW	68.7	1	158.8	6.30	13.2	1	2	30.23	59.9	57.4	617.7	390	18.89
2	Waterfall Way	NSW	59.9	5	170.8	8.00	19.1	0	1	16.98	3.3	57.2	609.6	1,316	11.71
3	Legendary Pacific Coast	NSW/QLD	56.8	6	990.1	3.95	13.5	3	2	12.42	28.2	52.7	708.5	185	23.33
4	Sydney to Melbourne Coastal Drive	NSW/VIC	55.5	8	1,446.4	3.28	12.7	4	3	12.44	33.9	54.6	641.0	299	15.14
5	Kosciuszko Alpine Way	NSW	55.1	9	431.0	5.05	25.6	1	4	9.74	0.0	61.9	424.5	1,241	8.12
6	Sydney-Melbourne Heritage Drive	NSW/VIC	51.0	11	1,110.9	4.11	5.8	3	6	12.06	0.9	32.8	622.5	660	12.60
7	Capital, Coast & Country	ACT/NSW	50.4	12	521.4	4.33	15.3	0	4	9.21	12.6	60.7	516.4	1,072	9.97
8	Great Inland Way	QLD/NSW	41.0	18	2,717.0	3.75	10.3	0	3	4.49	7.5	47.2	855.8	625	8.43

About the data

Routes are ranked against the others that run through New South Wales & the ACT. A route that crosses a border appears under each state it passes through. National rank is out of all 25.
The index score is the average of ten measures, each rescaled to 0–100 across the 25 routes and weighted equally, then scaled so that 100 would be a route in the top 10% on every measure. Each measure is taken inside a corridor 10 km either side of the route.
Route lengths and alignments follow each route’s published start and end points on today’s roads, so they won’t always match the linked page, which may quote a return trip, one state’s leg, a multi-day itinerary or a network of connected routes, or may have changed since the routes were set. Where a route differs, its tooltip explains why.
In the table, a dot marks the highest value of all 25 routes on that measure.

Source: Redspot Car Rentals, Best Nature Road Trips Index 2026. Data from DCCEEW, Geoscience Australia, the Atlas of Living Australia, Copernicus and Full Range Camping. Redspot locations as listed on redspot.com.au.

See full methodology for details.