After a pretty good night's sleep I had the blinds up early in my cabin to watch the sunrise over the Nullarbor Plain. It took all day until around 17.00hrs local time to traverse this hot, barren plateau twice the size of England but we made a stop around 2.00pm at the small outback town located on the longest straight stretch of track in the world that spans a distance of 478.
More about Cook in a later post.
Some Facts About the Nullarbor
Wikipedia informs me that the name Nullarbor Plain derives from the Latin: nulla feminine of nullus 'no' and arbor' tree so 'treeless area' located on the Great Australian Bight coast with the Great Victoria Desert to its north. It is the world's largest single exposure of limestone bedrock, and occupies an area of about 200,000 square kilometres (77,000 sq mi). At its widest point, it stretches about 1,100 kilometres (684 mi) from east to west across the border between South Australia and Western Australia.
The Trans-Australian Railway line crosses the Nullarbor Plain from Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta. Construction of the line began in 1917, when two teams set out from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia and Port Augusta in South Australia, meeting in the centre of the Plain at Ooldea, an uninhabited area noted for a water supply. This original line suffered severe problems with track flexing and settling in the desert sands so, the line was entirely rebuilt in 1969, as part of a project to standardise disparate rail gauges in the various Australian states. The first crossing of the Nullarbor on the new line reached Perth on 27 February 1970.
The Nullarbor is also crossed by the Eyre Highway, which connects Norseman in Western Australia to Port Augusta, was carved across the continent in 1941 (See map below). At first it was little more than a rough track but was gradually metalled over the next thirty years. The final section was tarred in 1976. Unlike the railway it crosses the plain at its southernmost edge rather than through the centre. The highway is named after Edward John Eyre, who In 1840–1841, was the first European to traverse the coastline of the Great Australian Bight and the Nullarbor Plain by land, on a 2,000-mile trip from Adelaide to Albany, Western Australia
| The Eyre Highway |
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| Map of South Australia and southern Western Australia with Eyre Highway highlighted in red |
The railway line has the longest straight section of railway in the world (478 km; 297 mi), while the Eyre Highway has the longest straight section of tarred road in Australia (146 km; 91 mi).
The Nullarbor and Meteorites
The Nullarbor has extensive meteorite deposits, which have been extremely well preserved in the arid climate.
The first photo above taken at 8.46am is of a Meteorite Detection Station of which there are three set out in a triangular formation over a large area of the Nullarbor.
The 2nd Photo was taken just after dawn and my first view of the Nullarbor Plain. My last view of the Nullarbor came at around 5.00pm when the landscape changed dramatically, almost as if a line had been drawn, to the more savannah like vegetation shown in the 3rd Photo.
More Coincidences
You know how I like a good coincidence and here are two about other travellers in my acquaintance who have traversed the Nullarbor.
The first friends, are of course Lesley and Bob who in June drove from Sydney to their new home in Perth. I seem to remember they took a route along the coast since they send me the 4th Photo of the German Bight coast at a spot famous for whale watching.
My second Nullarbor traveller is a neighbour whom I met on the morning of my return home as he was walking his dog. He told me that as a young man he had hitched a lift across the Nullarbor in a car/truck but he had to do so with his head out of the window at night to spot Wombats!! You will recall from my photo of a sleeping Wombat at the Sydney Wildlife Centre that they are rather large and solid animals akin to our native Badgers. His driver's comment had been "if we hit one of those mate, we are a goner!'
