Australia is old and flat. It has no alpine spine, its highest point is 2,228m, and most of the continent has no relief worth running up. What it does have is a scattering of ranges around the populated edges, and those ranges carry almost the entire trail-running calendar.
The terrain that results is distinctive. Australian trail is typically sandstone or granite rather than limestone, with long fire trails linking short technical sections, stone staircases where the escarpment demands them, and — in the Blue Mountains particularly — a vertical profile that comes in a few very large lumps rather than continuous rolling.
The Blue Mountains
The centre of Australian trail running, two hours from Sydney by train. The Blue Mountains are a dissected sandstone plateau rather than mountains in the alpine sense: you start high, drop into valleys, and climb back out, which produces steep sustained descents and staircases rather than long gradual ascents.
Ultra-Trail Australia is run here from Katoomba every May. The UTA100 covers 101km with 4,400m of gain and finishes up the 951 Furber Steps at about 99km. The UTAMiler adds 161.1km with 7,200m; UTA50, UTA22 and UTA11 fill in below. The organiser describes it as the world's second-largest ultra-trail, and it holds UTMB World Series Major status, which means double Running Stones towards the Chamonix finals.
The Six Foot Track Marathon in March runs 45km on the historic track from Katoomba to Jenolan Caves, and is the other institution of the range.
Victoria: the high country and the ranges
Victoria has the most varied trail terrain in the country and the deepest calendar. The Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne carry the 1000 Steps and the Maroondah Dam trail races; the You Yangs give granite; the Otways and the Great Ocean Road coast carry the Surf Coast Century, a 100km along the coast in September, and the Great Ocean Trail Ultra in October.
The Mornington Peninsula carries the Two Bays Trail — a 28km crossing from Dromana to Cape Schanck, raced as a 28km and a 56km double in January, which is one of the few significant summer trail races on the mainland.
The Victorian Alps around Bright, Mount Buffalo and Falls Creek are the closest Australia gets to alpine running, with real altitude, real snow in winter and a summer trail season the rest of the country cannot match.
The Snowy Mountains
Australia's highest ground, straddling the New South Wales and Victorian border. Ultra-Trail Kosciuszko by UTMB runs at Jindabyne in late November with distances from 30km to the miler. Coast to Kosci — 240km from the ocean at Eden to the summit of Mount Kosciuszko, in November — is the other end of the same landscape and one of the hardest events in the country.
Queensland and the hinterland
The Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast hinterlands — Springbrook, Lamington, the Blackall Range, the Glass House Mountains — carry subtropical rainforest trail, which is a genuinely different surface: wet, rooty, slippery, and shaded, which matters enormously in a state where heat is the limiting factor.
The Blackall 100 in October and the Kokoda Challenge — a team event over 48km or 96km in the Gold Coast hinterland — are the signature races. Further north, the Noosa Ultra-Trail runs in March with distances to 100km.
Western Australia
The Bibbulmun Track runs 1,000km from Kalamunda in the Perth Hills to Albany on the south coast, through jarrah forest and then karri and coast. It is the spine of trail running in the west, and races along it and around it fill the WA calendar between autumn and spring — the Delirious WEST 200 miler is run on its southern end in February.
The Cape to Cape Track in the Margaret River region gives 123km of coastal trail between two lighthouses, and is raced as a multi-day event.
Tasmania
Tasmania is the outlier: genuinely mountainous, genuinely cold, and with weather that can turn in an afternoon. The Overland Track, the Three Capes and the trails around Cradle Mountain and Mount Wellington give the most alpine-feeling running in Australia, and the summer trail season here runs when the mainland cannot.
What is different about Australian trail
- Water is the constraint, not gradient. Australian trails often have no reliable water for twenty or thirty kilometres, and races carry mandatory carry requirements because of it.
- Mandatory gear is normal and enforced. UTA checks it and turns runners away without it — this is not a formality copied from Europe, it is a response to genuinely remote terrain.
- Fire trail is a large share of the running. Long, wide, exposed and runnable, linking shorter technical sections.
- Snakes are present from spring to autumn, and the sensible response is to make noise, watch the ground, and not step over logs blindly rather than to stay indoors.
- Bushfire can close a course at short notice, and summer events in particular carry contingency plans. Total fire ban days override race plans.
- Stone staircases are a feature, particularly in the Blue Mountains. Training for descending stairs is not optional if you are running UTA.