Driving the Nullarbor

Date of Adventure about 24 January 2025 to about 30 January 2025

The Nullarbor is a region along the south of Australia that runs through parts of both South Australia and Western Australia. The southern boundary is the Great Australian Bight. It’s a huge limestone plane. It was named in the 1800’s as the null (none) arbor (tree). There are portions that are relatively treeless and as you get west, well into WA there are areas with a lot of trees.

Before actually getting to the Nullarbor, but considered the start of the trip across, is the town of Penong with an interesting windmill museum. It was established and put together by a couple of local families who thought it would make an interesting tourist attraction as well as a way to document all of the different kinds of windmills used in rural Australia because they are being replace by solar powered electric pumps.

The Comet windmill is one of the largest made and used in Australia. It is over 10 meters in diameter. In person, it’s pretty damned big.

Taking a side trip from Penong is a famous lake, Lake Mcdonnell. It’s famous because one part of the lake is often very pink in color. The road (dirt) runs through it in a way that one side is pink and the other kind of normal green. Unfortunately it hadn’t rained for a very long time and the pink part was mostly just a salt pan. Almost dry and only a tinge of pink on the edges.

I was planning to camp in a campground close to the beach, just beyond Lake McDonnell but the wind was blowing like crazy and there was no way I wanted to camp under those conditions. So I drove on and just found a relatively protected place along the highway.

The next day I made it to the official start of the Nullarbor.

The drive wasn’t too bad. Lots of kilometers of no trees but I drove the main highway and the going was OK.

There are several places along the highway that are “reserved” for landing RFDS planes. That’s the Royal Flying Doctor Service. I’ve seen lots of evidence of this service from small airstrips in the middle of nowhere to sections of highway where the medical people can land. It is interesting that this service (started back in the 1920’s) is available all over Australia. If needed, they will fly medical personnel to the most remote places.

When you get to the border between South Australia (SA) and Western Australia (WA) there is a quarantine stop. You have to throw all of your fruit and vegetables away. I knew about it so hadn’t kept very much.

The drive is really along the Great Australian Bight and there are times when you are driving pretty close to the Southern Ocean.

And in WA the area is a National Park. Camping is no longer allowed on the Bunda Cliffs here because the land is unstable and you aren’t allowed to drive out really close to the edge. There are official and unofficial places where you can stop and see the cliffs.

Pictures don’t really do it justice. These are some spectacular cliffs overlooking the ocean.

I kind of took my time driving across. There are a few roadhouses along the way with campgrounds but I didn’t stay in any of those. You can read the Koonalda posting, which is one place I camped. And there are several turnouts with pretty good, protected free camping associated with them.

And, approaching the end or maybe beyond the official end of the Nullarbor is the longest straight road in Australia. It’s 90 miles long without the smallest bend. By then there were a significant number of trees.

Next stop was Norseman.