Nullarbor Plain 1

Nullarbor Plain

NASA - Visible Earth, Nullarbor. The true Nullarbor is the light tan semi-circulararea adjacent to the coast. Image acquired by the Terra on 19 August 2002

The Nullarbor Plain (/ˈnʌləbɔr/NUL-ə-bor; Latin: nullus, "no", and arbor,"tree") is part of the area of flat, almosttreeless, arid or semi-arid country ofsouthern Australia, located on the GreatAustralian Bight coast with the GreatVictoria Desert to its north. It is the world'slargest single piece of limestone, andoccupies an area of about 200,000 squarekilometres (77,000 sq mi). At its widestpoint, it stretches about 1,100 kilometres(684 mi) from east to west between SouthAustralia and Western Australia.

History

Historically, the Nullarbor, considered byEuropeans to be almost uninhabitable, was used by the semi-nomadic Aborigines, the Spinifex and Wangai peoples.It was used for thousands of years before that by prehistoric Aborigines.

Despite the hardships created by the nature of the Nullarbor, European settlers were determined to cross the plain.Although Edward John Eyre described the Plain as "a hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of Nature, the sort of placeone gets into in bad dreams", he became the first European to successfully make the crossing in 1841. Eyre departedFowlers Bay, South Australia on 17 November 1840 with John Baxter and a party of three Aboriginal men. Whenthree of his horses died of dehydration, he returned to Fowler's Bay. He departed with a second expedition on 25February 1841. By 29 April, the party had reached Caiguna. Lack of supplies and water led to a mutiny. Two of theAborigines killed Baxter and took the party's supplies. Eyre and the third Aborigine, Wylie, continued on theirjourney, surviving through bushcraft and some fortuitous circumstances, such as receiving some supplies from aFrench whaling vessel anchored at Rossiter Bay. They completed their crossing in June 1841.

In August 1865, while travelling across the Nullarbor, E.A. Delisser in his journal named both Nullarbor and Euclafor the first time [1]

On 25 December 1896, after an arduous journey of thirty-one days, Arthur Charles Jeston Richardson became thefirst cyclist to cross the Nullarbor Plain, pedaling his bicycle from Coolgardie to Adelaide.[2] Carrying only a smallkit and a water-bag, he followed the telegraph line as he crossed the Nullarbor. He later described the heat as "1,000degrees in the shade".[3] During their three-year cycling trip around Australia between 1946-1949, Wendy Law Suartand Shirley Duncan became the first women to cycle across the Plain.A proposed new state of Auralia (meaning "land of gold") would have comprised the Goldfields, the western portionof the Nullarbor Plain and the port town of Esperance. Its capital would have been Kalgoorlie.During the British nuclear tests at Maralinga in the 1950s, the government forced the Wangai to abandon theirhomeland. Since then they have been awarded compensation, and many have returned to the general area. Othersnever left. Due to their isolation, the government was not able to reach all of the people to warn about evacuatingbefore the testing.Some agricultural interests are on the fringe of the plain including the 2.5 million acre Rawlinna Station, the largest sheep station in the world, on the Western Australian side of the plain. The property was established in 1962 by

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Hugh G. MacLachlan, of the South Australian pastoral family, the station has a comparatively short historycompared to other properties of its type around Australia. An older property is Madura Station, situated closer to thecoast, it has a size of 1.7 million acres and is also stocked with sheep. Madura was established prior to 1927, theextent of the property at that time was reported as two million acres.

Cultural significance

Road sign

"Crossing the Nullarbor", for many Australians, is a quintessentialexperience of the "Australian Outback". Stickers bought fromroadhouses on the highway show "I have crossed the Nullarbor", andcan be seen on vehicles of varying quality or capacity for long distancetravel. The process of "beating the crowds" on overbooked air servicesat the time of special sporting events can also see significant numbersof vehicles on the road.

Crossings in the 1950s and earlier were significant, as most of the routethen was a dirt track. Round-Australia car trials (the Redex Trials) usedthe Nullarbor crossing for good photo shoots of cars negotiating poortrack.

Geography

Another road sign

The Nullarbor Plain is a former shallow seabed, as indicated by thepresence of bryozoans, foraminifera, echinoids and red algaecalcareous skeletal that make up the limestone. The region is also thelocation of "Nullarbor limestone" and it has a reputation as asignificant karst region with Oligocene and Miocene caveformations.[4]

The sequence within the limestone includes five formations:• the upper formation is the Nullarbor Limestone which is early

middle Miocene in age;• the Mullamullang member of this formation is a paraconforming

member, being separated by 5 million years;• the third member is the Abrakurrie Limestone that was formed in a central depression of the earlier formation;

this is late Oligocene to Early Miocene in age and does not reach the edge of the plain;• the last two formations are conforming formations; the late Eocene Toolinna Limestone lies on the Wilsons Bluff

Limestone which is mid to late Eocene in age; and•• the Toolinna Limestone does not cover the whole Nullarbor and is extant only in the extreme east beside the

Abrakurrie formation which lies in a depression.

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Tree full of shoes in "the middle of nowhere," theNullarbor, Western Australia.

One theory is that the whole area was uplifted by crustal movements inthe Miocene, and since then, erosion by wind and rain has reduced itsthickness. The plain has most likely never had any major definingtopographic features, resulting in the extremely flat terrain across theplain today.

In areas, the southern ocean blows through many subterranean caves,resulting in blowholes up to several hundred metres from the coast.The Murrawijinie Caves in South Australia are open to the public, butmost of the Nullarbor Caves on the Western Australian side can onlybe visited and viewed with a permit from the Department ofEnvironment and Conservation.

The Nullarbor is known for extensive meteorite deposits, which are extremely well preserved in the arid climate. Inparticular, many meteorites have been discovered around Mundrabilla, some up to several tonnes in weight.[5]

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the Nullarbor's soils are considered to be mainly aridisols.

Rainbow over the Nullarbor Plain.

The prevailing climate across the Nullarbor is typical of a desert,characterised by arid to semi-arid conditions, with maximum daytimetemperatures of up to 48.7 °C (119.7 °F), while in winter nights candrop below freezing. The mean annual rainfall at Cook is 184.1millimetres (7.25 in), with most rain falling between May and August.

Transport

The need for a communications link across the continent was the spurfor the development of an east–west crossing. Once Eyre had provedthat a link between South Australia and Western Australia waspossible, efforts to connect them via telegraph began. In 1877, after two years of labour, the first messages were senton the new telegraph line, boosted by eight repeater stations along the way. The line operated for about 50 yearsbefore being superseded, and remnants of it remain visible.

The Trans-Australian Railway 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 PortAugusta in South Australia, meeting in the centre of the Plain at Ooldea, an uninhabited area noted for a watersupply. This original line suffered severe problems with track flexing and settling in the desert sands, and journeysacross the Plain were slow and arduous. The line was entirely rebuilt in 1969, as part of a project to standardise thepreviously disparate rail gauges in the various states, and the first crossing of the Nullarbor on the new line reachedPerth on 27 February 1970. The Indian Pacific is a regular passenger train crossing the Nullarbor from Perth toSydney via Adelaide.

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The Nullarbor Plain viewed from the IndianPacific. The featureless terrain made navigation

difficult for early explorers.

The Eyre Highway, which connects Norseman in Western Australia toPort Augusta, was carved across the continent in 1941. At first it waslittle more than a rough track, but was gradually sealed over the nextthirty years. The last unsealed section of the Eyre Highway was finallysealed in 1976. Unlike the railway, though, it crosses the plain at itssouthernmost edge rather than through the centre.

The railway line has the longest straight section of railway in the world(478 km, 297 mi), while the road contains the longest straight sectionof tarred road in Australia (146.6 km, 91.1 mi).Most of the inhabited areas of the Nullarbor Plain can be found in aseries of small settlements located along the railway, and in smallsettlements along the Eyre Highway that provide services to travellers,mostly spaced between one and two hundred kilometres apart. The town of Cook, in South Australia, was formerly amoderately thriving settlement of about 40 people, with a school and a golf course. The reduction of railwayoperations at the town resulted in its virtual desertion, and it now has a permanent population of four. The Tea andSugar Train operated until 1996 supplying provisions to the town along the railway line.

Biogeography

The IBRA regions, with Nullarbor in red.

Nullarbor is a biogeographic region under the Interim BiogeographicRegionalisation for Australia (IBRA) [6] and the Nullarbor Plains XericShrubland ecoregion of the World Wildlife Fund.

Vegetation in the area is primarily low saltbush and bluebush scrub. Alarge part of the Nullarbor Plain is now a National Park.

The fauna of the Nullarbor includes communities of crustaceans,spiders, and beetles adapted to the darkness of the Nullarbor Caves andthe underground rivers and lakes that run through them. Mammals ofthe desert include the southern hairy-nosed wombat which sheltersfrom the hot sun by burrowing into the sands, as well as typical desertanimals such as red kangaroos and dingoes. An elusive subspecies ofthe Australian masked owl unique to the Nullarbor is known to roost in the many caves on the plain. The grasslandsof the Nullarbor are suitable for some sheep grazing and are also damaged by rabbits.

LimitsFrequently The Nullarbor is expanded in tourist literature and web-based material to loosely refer to all the landbetween Adelaide, South Australia and Perth, Western Australia.[7]

References[1] Journal of the Great Australian Bight Expedition, May–October 1865, recording the exploration and naming of the Nullarbor Plain. Written

in pencil and ink, the journal covers the dates 1 May to 5 October. Both volumes include mounted and identified botanical specimens, withsome since lost or deteriorated. Book II includes a sketch plan entitled "Bight Country -The two catacombs near Kuelna [Colona?] July 16Sunday -1865". This volume appears to contain the first written use of the name Nullarbor Plain under the date Friday 18 August 1865. - seehttp:/ / trove. nla. gov. au/ work/ 34692051

[2] Fitzpatrick, Jim, "Richardson, Arthur Charles Jeston (1872 - 1939)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 11, Melbourne UniversityPress (1988), p. 379

[3][3] Fitzpatrick, p. 379

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[4] Stratigraphic Search - Full Results - Geoscience Australia (http:/ / dbforms. ga. gov. au/ pls/ www/ geodx. strat_units.sch_full?wher=stratno=25355)

[5] The Meteoretical Bulletin, No. 77, 1994 November (http:/ / www. lpi. usra. edu/ meteor/ docs/ mb77. html)[6] IBRA Version 6.1 (http:/ / www. deh. gov. au/ parks/ nrs/ ibra/ version6-1/ index. html) data[7] A tourist map of the Nullarbor Plain Perth to Adelaide Scale 1:2,250,000 (E 116°00’ --E 139°00’/S 30°00’--S 38°00’) Unley, S. Aust. : Carto

Graphics, ISBN 0-9579060-4-8

Further reading• Bolam, A. G. (Anthony Gladstone), 1893–1966. The trans-Australian wonderland Melbourne : Modern Printing,

(many editions in the early 20th century)• Edmonds, Jack (1976) Nullarbor crossing : with panorama photographs by Brian Gordon. Perth. West Australian

Newspapers, Periodicals Division. ISBN 0-909699-09-7

External links• Nullarbor Net (http:/ / www. nullarbornet. com. au)• Across The Nullarbor (http:/ / www. travography. com/ nullarbor/ ) Travel story by Roderick Eime• Information about crossing the Nullarbor (http:/ / www. mynrma. com. au/ travel/ holidays/ ideas/ wa/

across-the-nullarbor. htm)• Eyre Bird Observatory (http:/ / www. eyrebirds. org/ observatories/ eyre. htm)• Climate charts (http:/ / www. bom. gov. au/ climate/ averages/ tables/ cw_018106. shtml)• History of the rail crossing (http:/ / www. gsr. com. au/ apps/ media/ story. php?primKeyPost=12)• Mundrabilla meteorite information (http:/ / spaceresearch. nasa. gov/ research_projects/ meteorite. html)• Caverns give up huge fossil haul (http:/ / news. bbc. co. uk/ 2/ hi/ science/ nature/ 6296029. stm) BBC News

Online, 25 January 2007. Retrieved 25 January 2007• aerial video footage of the Nullarbor Plain (http:/ / www. aerialvideo. com. au/ nullabor. html)• Photo Essay on Driving Australia's Nullarbor Plain (http:/ / www. nicholsonprints. com/ Essays/ NullarborIntro.

htm)• Governmental Biodiversity Assessment of the Nullarbor Plain (http:/ / www. anra. gov. au/ topics/ vegetation/

assessment/ sa/ ibra-nullarbor. html)

Article Sources and Contributors 6

Article Sources and ContributorsNullarbor Plain  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=577844745  Contributors: 1717, Aboeing, AndreasJS, Andycjp, Anita13, Arno, Arwtee, Baridiah, Bkell, Borgarde,Bulwersator, CJ, Calmer Waters, Camerong, Chester Markel, Chris the speller, Clarkecb, Clarkk, Closedmouth, Crusoe8181, Cygnis insignis, DRyan, DanMS, Dave.Dunford, David Newton,Deflective, Dellant, Dhum Dhum, Discospinster, Dl2000, Doxology, Dthomsen8, Dysmorodrepanis, Dysprosia, Earthlyreason, Edcolins, Enlil Ninlil, EoGuy, Eric Wester, Ericamick, Esperant,Felixkasza, FiggyBee, Finlay McWalter, Flyguy649, Gadfium, Gaelen S., Gaius Cornelius, Gavin sidhu, Gazjo, Gildir, Giraffedata, Glen Dillon, GraemeL, Graham87, Hairy Dude, Harryboyles,Hasty Fool, Hesperian, Hike395, Hughesdarren, Hugo999, Hydrox, IamCanadianEh, Istanbuljohnm, J.delanoy, JackofOz, Jasper33, Jauhienij, Jcsutton, Jngrossman, John D. Croft, Johnfos,Johnsp1, Kackle12, Kwamikagami, Kylotan, Leo Lazauskas, Leptictidium, Les boys, Lesqual, Lordsutch, LorenzoB, MacRusgail, Maias, MapsMan, Mark, Mimihitam, Mitch Ames, Nachosan,NawlinWiki, Nika 243, One Salient Oversight, Orderinchaos, PCHL, Packa, Parkwells, Paul foord, Pot, Proof64, Ptcamn, R'n'B, Rangasyd, Reinhard Kraasch, Repat, Robert Merkel, Rodeime,Roo72, SatuSuro, ScottDavis, SeanMack, Skysmith, Snusnumrik, Stan Shebs, Stemonitis, Strainj1, StuartH, Suprcel, Sweetcorn, TOttenville8, TShilo12, Tannin, Tban, The Man in Question,Theo Pardilla, Tiles, Tom Radulovich, TomCerul, V79benno, Vidioman, Whitepaw, Widr, Wing, Wongm, Worldtraveller, Wwilly, Yewenyi, Yourhotsaltytears96, Zamphuor, Zweifel, 115anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and ContributorsImage:Australia.A2002231.0145.250m NASA Nullarbor.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Australia.A2002231.0145.250m_NASA_Nullarbor.jpg  License: GNUFree Documentation License  Contributors: Albinfo, Fairv8Image:Nullarbor Plain Road Sign DSC04541.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Nullarbor_Plain_Road_Sign_DSC04541.jpg  License: GNU Free DocumentationLicense  Contributors: Yewenyi at en.wikipedia (Brian Voon Yee Yap)Image:Nullarbor Plain Escarpment DSC04558.JPG  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Nullarbor_Plain_Escarpment_DSC04558.JPG  License: GNU Free DocumentationLicense  Contributors: Original uploader was Yewenyi at en.wikipediaImage:Schuhbaum nullabor.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Schuhbaum_nullabor.jpg  License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0  Contributors: RepatImage:Nullarbor Plain Rainbow DSC04547.JPG  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Nullarbor_Plain_Rainbow_DSC04547.JPG  License: GNU Free DocumentationLicense  Contributors: Original uploader was Yewenyi at en.wikipediaImage:Nullabor plain from the indian pacific.jpg  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Nullabor_plain_from_the_indian_pacific.jpg  License: Creative CommonsAttribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported  Contributors: 17177, Fairv8, Nachoman-auImage:IBRA 6.1 Nullarbor.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:IBRA_6.1_Nullarbor.png  License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Contributors: Hesperian

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