Qualla: Deakin, Western Australia

Deakin, Western Australia: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Somewhere on the Nullarbor, in ground that looks identical for hundreds of kilometres in every direction, there is a concrete obelisk with a copper plug set into its top. Draw a line through the centre of that plug and you have the border between Western Australia and South Australia - not roughly, not approximately, but exactly. The nearest settlement to this small monument is Deakin, the last railway siding in Western Australia before the line crosses into the neighbouring state. It is a place defined entirely by edges: the edge of a state, the edge of habitation, the edge of the map.

Deakin, Western Australia: The Last Stop in the West

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Deakin is a remote locality on the Trans-Australian Railway, and it holds a particular distinction: it is the westernmost state's final siding before the boundary, the closest inhabited point to the line that separates Western Australia from South Australia. That line is the 129t...

Deakin, Western Australia: Pinning a Meridian to the Ground

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Defining a border by longitude sounds simple until you try to do it in the field. A meridian is invisible; surveyors had to translate it into something you could stand beside. They did it in stages. First came the Deakin Pillar in 1921, a fixed reference point established by care...

Deakin, Western Australia: Geometry in an Empty Land

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

There is something quietly remarkable about the effort involved. To place those markers, survey parties hauled instruments and supplies out onto one of the most featureless landscapes on the continent, took star sightings through the clear desert nights, and computed positions by...

Deakin, Western Australia: A Border You Could Walk Past

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Today Deakin is barely a place at all - a name on the timetable, a siding beside the track, a scattering of railway infrastructure on the plain. The Indian Pacific passes through without ceremony, and most travellers never register the moment the train slips from one state into t...