Nullarbor National Park

Nullarbor Plain is a low plateau of limestone which extends along part of the south coast of South Australia and Western Australia. Its name comes from the Latin words nullus arbor, meaning “no trees” and it is a bleak desert region bordered in the south by steep cliffs that overlook the Great Australian Bight. Nullarbor may not be strictly correct Latin for “treeless”, but it’s an apt description of the plain which stretches flat and infertile for over 1200km.

It is crossed by the Eyre Highway and by the Australian National Railways Trans-Australian Line, which contains the longest straight stretch of track in the world, measuring 478 kilometres (297 miles). The Nullarbor National Park is home to some of the region’s rare animals and plants.

The Plain

The last chance to catch some waves is at Cactus Beach/Point Sinclair south of Penong, and even for non-surfies it’s worth the drive through white dunes, green shrubbery and blue lagoons to watch the extraordinary wave formations; there’s a campsite with firewood provided (but no drinking water) and a basic store (12.30–2pm) while the nearest civilized accommodation is at the Penong Hotel. To view the area by camel, call Goanywea Camel Safaris (tel 08/8625 1093).

Two hours from Penong you arrive at Yalata Community, settled by the Maralinga peoples cleared off their ancestral land by the British atomic bomb tests at Maralinga in the 1950s. At the roadhouse (tel 08/8625 6986) you can obtain permits to cross community borders and reach the Head of the Bight, the best place to see whales when they migrate up here between June and October. The Head is a stirring setting, where in a distance of less than 1km powdery dunes rise to absurdly melodramatic cliffs – you can’t help feeling that this is how early cartographers must have envisaged the edge of the world. The southern right whales sport idly with their calves in the water below. 

Twenty minutes away is the Nullarbor Roadhouse, which has beds and a campsite, and is the last place to get fuel before Border Village. The famous triple yellow sign on the highway warning of camels, wombats and kangaroos marks the beginning of the run, which has absolutely no trees. Ironically, rabbits – no longer controlled by farmers now that the area is a national park – have almost crowded out the wombats.

Curiously enough for a land with minimal rainfall, the Nullarbor is undermined by flooded limestone caverns explored recently by scuba divers and visited 25,000 years ago by Aborigines looking for water and chalcedony to make tools. From the outside, Koonalda Cave (just north of the Nullarbor Roadhouse) is a large hole with recently planted fruit trees growing in the mouth; inside, a tremendously deep network of tunnels leads to an underground lake, the shafts grooved by fingers being dragged over their soft walls. Although the patterns are clearly deliberate, their meaning is unknown. The cave is closed off to protect the engravings, but the Ceduna NPWS might be able to arrange a visit.

Border Village is just another roadhouse with a natty fibreglass kangaroo in the car park. Eucla and the rest of the Nullarbor lie 16km over the border in Western Australia on a noticeably worse road and in a considerably earlier time zone.

For more general and product information on the Nullabor Plains, go to:

• Cactus Beach (Penong)
• Ceduna