Western Australia

Covering a third of the continent, Western Australia feels like a world of its own. Its 12,000 km of coastline runs from tropical Ningaloo Reef—where whale sharks gather in the shallows—to the stormy cliffs of the Southern Ocean. Humpbacks migrate past Perth's beaches, leafy seadragons haunt kelp forests, and remote reefs glow with corals few divers ever see. Vast, empty landscapes on land are matched by so much frontier still largely unexplored.