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Concept
Nullarbor Plain
Summary
The Nullarbor Plain (ˈnʌlərbɔr ; Latin: nulla feminine of nullus, "no", and arbor, "tree") is part of the area of flat, almost treeless, arid or semi-arid country of southern Australia, 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 . At its widest point, it stretches about from east to west across the border between South Australia and Western Australia.
Historically, the Nullarbor was seasonally occupied by Indigenous Australian people, the Mirning clans and Yinyila people. Traditionally, the area was called Oondiri, which is said to mean "the waterless".
The first Europeans known to have sighted and mapped the Nullarbor coast were Captain François Thijssen and Councillor of the Indies, Pieter Nuyts, on the Dutch East Indiaman 't Gulden Zeepaert (the Golden Seahorse). In 1626–1627, they charted a stretch of the southern Australian coast east of Cape Leeuwin and extending to longitude 133 30'E. While the interior remained little known to Europeans over the next two centuries, the stretch of coast adjoining the Great Australian Bight was named for Nuyts, and maps subsequent to 1627 bore the legend "Landt van P. Nuyts" or "Terre de Nuyts". That survives as two geographical names in West Australia: Nuytsland Nature Reserve and Nuyts Land District, and in South Australia as Nuyts Reef, Cape Nuyts and the Nuyts Archipelago.
Edward John Eyre became the first European to successfully cross the Nullarbor in 1841. In writing about Eyre's voyages in 1865, Henry Kingsley wrote that the area across the Nullarbor and Great Australian Bight was a "hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of Nature, the sort of place one gets into in bad dreams". Eyre departed Fowler's Bay on 17 November 1840 with John Baxter and a party of three Aboriginal men. When three of his horses died of dehydration, he returned to Fowler's Bay. He departed with a second expedition on 25 February 1841. By 29 April, the party had reached Caiguna.
Official source
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