Journeys hold a special place in Australian movies. By road or by foot, the heroes in our movies spend an awful lot of time getting from A to B – and sometimes, as in the current release Last Cab to Darwin and Mad Max: Fury Road, as soon as they get there they turn around and come back. You'd almost think we love the journey more than the destination. 

Maybe there's something in that. We're just about as far from each other as we are from the rest of the world, and travel is how we connect.

Whether through the songlines of the indigenous peoples or the inland tracks of the white explorers, we've long been making our marks on a country that instantly tries to erase them. Our cinema is just another way we try to make sense of this vast, indifferent landscape.

We love a sunburnt country – on film at least. Though 90 per cent of Australians live in cities, most Australian road movies traverse those bits of the country few of us really know. The bush. The desert. The vast untrammelled expanses of that mythical place we call the Outback.

Long before the "new wave" that marked the birth of the Australian film industry as we now know it, Chips Rafferty was driving a herd of cattle across the country to escape an expected Japanese invasion in The Overlanders (1946).

In the early 1970s, two outsiders saw nothing but the tyranny of distance in Australia's vast interior, a theme echoed 40-odd years later in Greg McLean's Wolf Creek (2005). In Walkabout (1970), from Englishman Nicolas Roeg​, the outback is where two young kids are abandoned after their father drives into the bush and kills himself; in Wake in Fright (1971), from Canadian Ted Kotcheff​, it is a place the schoolteacher hero tries and repeatedly fails to escape.

That film was shot in and around Broken Hill, a town that punches far above its weight cinematically. Mad Max 2, Razorback, Reckless Kelly, Priscilla, Mission: Impossible II all passed through. Last Cab to Darwin starts and ends there. Fury Road would have been shot there had it not been for the two years of torrential rains that turned the post-apocalyptic desert landscape into a rich carpet of green. In Australian film, it sometimes seems all roads lead to, or from, Broken Hill.

Here, then, are 10 great Australian road movies. Quibble if you like. Make your own list. Explore the interactive map on our digital platforms.

You'll note that I've included two movies in which the travel is mostly on foot – Tracks and Rabbit-Proof Fence. I reckon that's not too much of a stretch: if Australian cinema is fascinated by the road less travelled, sometimes that road is so untravelled it hasn't even been made yet.

10 great Australian road movies

Last Cab to Darwin (2015) 
Broken Hill to Darwin, via Coober Pedy​ and Oodnadatta (3309 kilometres)
Based on the true story of Max Bell, a Broken Hill taxi driver who in 1999 attempted to become the first person to take advantage of the Northern Territory's euthanasia laws, this has Michael Caton starring as the irascible Rex, who drives to Darwin to try to get Dr Farmer (Jacki Weaver) to put him out of his cancer-induced misery.

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) 
Moore River Native Settlement to Jigalong​ (2400 kilometres)
Phillip Noyce​ took a break from directing Hollywood action thrillers to helm this based-on-fact story of three young Indigenous girls who walked from a native settlement near Perth back to their homeland in 1931, following the world's longest fence.

Red Dog (2011) 
Dampier to Perth to Darwin (5576 kilometres) 
Another story with at least a loose basis in fact, Kriv Stenders' family-friendly(-ish) film tells the tale of a kelpie who wandered the outback in search of his dead owner. Aww.

The Rover (2014) 
Hammond to Marree, SA (380 kilometres) 
On a stretch of road through the desert north of Adelaide, the colonial past and the post-apocalyptic near-future merge into one hot, dusty mess. It's like Mad Max shorn of the glamour, as Robert Pattinson and Guy Pearce become unlikely allies in a bid for survival.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) 
Broken Hill to Namibia (11,406 kilometres) 
You want to get outta here, you talk to Charlize. Number 2 was shot in Broken Hill and this one was due to follow suit, but this time around, George Miller's post-apocalyptic landscape was blighted by rains, turning the desert green. So Max and co shipped off to Namibia instead. And why not? It could be set anywhere. Our favourite bit is the way they get to the end of the journey and simply turn around and come back. Hilarious.

Wolf Creek (2005) 
Broome to Wolf Creek (actually Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater, 769 kilometres) 
It's the gap-year backpacking dream become nightmare as an impromptu desert stop leads to car breakdown leads to psychopath Mick Taylor (John Jarratt) and his infamous head-on-a-stick party trick. It's enough to make you want to stay home.

True Love and Chaos (1997) 
Melbourne to Perth via the Nullarbor (3421 kilometres) 
A drug deal gone wrong sees a carload of misfits – Hugo Weaving, Noah Taylor, Miranda Otto and Naveen Andrews – set off across the Nullarbor, fleeing a vengeful dealer (Ben Mendelsohn​). Directed by Stavros Andonis Efthymiou​, who co-wrote and co-produced Emma-Kate Croghan's​ much-loved 1996 campus comedy Love and Other Catastrophes (1996).

Tracks (2013) 
Alice Springs to Woodleigh, WA (2623 kilometres) 
Robyn Davidson's memoir of travelling across the desert from Alice Springs to the west coast on foot, with only a herd of camels (and occasional visit from photographer-boyfriend) stars Mia Wasikowska in one of the loneliest performances ever committed to the screen.

Kiss or Kill (1997) 
Edwardstown to Cactus Beach, SA (846 kilometres) 
Petty crims (Frances O'Connor​ and Matt Day) flee Adelaide when a mark accidentally dies. But everywhere they stop, more dead bodies turn up. Is someone following them, or is one of them the killer? Bill Bennett's sexy comic thriller won five AFI awards, including best picture and director.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) 
Sydney to Alice Springs, via Broken Hill and Coober Pedy​ (2787 kilometres) 
Whether you think it peddled stereotypes or subverted them, Priscilla undoubtedly struck a chord, its tale of three drag queens (Terence Stamp, Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce) on a sequin- and taffeta-fuelled bus trip through the red centre taking almost $16.5 million locally.

Follow Karl Quinn on Twitter: @karlkwin

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