Back Roads

- Season 4

(2018)

Heather Ewart travels to Waterfall Way in NSW, one of the most beautiful drives in Australia. But it's not just the scenery that's spectacular, Heather meets some wonderful locals including celebrated pianist, David Helfgott.

Heather Ewart travels along the southern Murray River. She meets locals who've weathered drought and flood. She experiences many shades of the river from its bountiful Riverland to the spectacular limestone cliffs of Big Bend.

Guest presenter Paul West visits the small, yet spectacular, town of Natimuk in Victoria. Paul discovers that two worlds have collided in Natimuk, where the community is a mix of rock climbers and German-Lutheran farmers.

Heather visits Scottsdale in Tasmania's north-east. After losing three major industries, the area's unemployment figures doubled. With the only options to move or innovate, locals started creating new jobs.

ABC News presenter Joe O'Brien visits the tiny Queensland town of Thallon. Joe grew up in regional Queensland, and he gladly leaves the studio behind to head into the outback.

Heather Ewart visits Robinvale, in Victoria, which was named after a local soldier, Lieutenant George 'Robin' Cuttle, who was killed at the Somme during the First World War, near the town of Villers-Bretonneux in France.

Guest presenter and triple j newsreader Brooke Boney is taking over the Back Roads reins this week, travelling to the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin.

In the mid-season final, Heather Ewart travels to the surprising little town of Nyngan. The gateway to the outback in NSW, this isolated spot on the Bogan River, Nyngan locals are changing the lives of others.

Heather Ewart is on a road trip in Queensland with a much-loved travelling greengrocer. For 30 years, Fari Rameshfar has traveled through droughts, cyclones and floods to deliver fresh food to people living in isolation.

Heather Ewart heads to the NSW outback town of Lightning Ridge, a place of dreamers and drifters, with most residents lured by the black opals. Heather discovers the many stories of Lightning Ridge's outback grit.

Guest presenter Paul West visits the Furneaux Islands, a wild and windswept group of islands in Bass Strait, just off Tasmania. The cold ocean waters are full of treasures like lobsters and abalone, plus rusted shipwrecks.

Heather Ewart travels to the historic Victorian town of Beaufort, which is halfway between the two 'rats' - Ararat and Ballarat. 160 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, it's a place where old and new collide.

Back Roads travels to Marble Bar, known as the hottest place in Australia. Singer-songwriter and ABC Radio's Saturday Night Country presenter Felicity Urquhart takes the wheel as we visit red-dirt country in the Pilbara, WA.

Heather Ewart visits The Coorong, an area spanning 130kms of South Australian coastline. It's a stunning mosaic of wild ocean beaches, lagoons and wetlands, but in many ways it's become the forgotten end of the Murray River.

ABC's Joe O'Brien visits the remote Northern Territory community of Finke, traditionally known as Aputula and famous for the Finke Desert Race, a 460 kilometre off-road endurance rally, one of the toughest in the world.

Heather Ewart visits the small town of Windorah in Queenslands Channel country between Longreach and Birdsville. Many people live there because they love the splendid isolation, but it comes with a price. (Season Final)