Qualla: Forrest

Forrest: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greg Barrington, CC BY-SA 3.0. The documentary about this place is called "The Big Wait," and the title says almost everything. Forrest is a settlement on the Nullarbor Plain with a population you can count on one hand - two people, by some accounts - tending half a dozen empty cottages and a pair of runways that stretch out into the saltbush. Once, this tiny outpost was a crucial pause in the long haul across Australia, a place where trains stopped and aircraft refuelled and weather balloons rose twice a day. Today it mostly waits: for a plane on the horizon, for a traveller off the track, for something to break the enormous quiet of the plain.

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Image: Greg Barrington | CC BY-SA 3.0

Forrest: Born of a Railway

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greg Barrington, CC BY-SA 3.0. Forrest exists because of a line on the ground. It was established in 1916 during the building of the Trans-Australian Railway, the steel ribbon that finally joined the eastern colonies to the west and helped knit the new nation together. The settlement sits squarely on the most ...

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Image: Greg Barrington | CC BY-SA 3.0

Forrest: The Refuelling Stop in the Sky

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The land here is so flat and the skies so clear that Forrest found a second purpose overhead. Its airfield opened in 1929 as the overnight stop on the first scheduled passenger air service between Perth and Adelaide, flown by West Australian Airways. For aircraft with short range...

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Image: Public domain

Forrest: Reading the Weather for the Nation

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greg Barrington, CC BY-SA 3.0. For decades, Forrest did important work that few ever saw. A Bureau of Meteorology office operated here, and right up until the 1990s its staff released weather balloons twice every day, sending instruments up into the sky to measure the atmosphere over one of the most data-spars...

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Image: Greg Barrington | CC BY-SA 3.0

Forrest: The Big Wait

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greg Barrington, CC BY-SA 3.0. What remains is a study in beautiful isolation. The great passenger train that still crosses the line, the Indian Pacific, rolls straight past without stopping. By road, Forrest can be reached only along rough unsealed tracks branching off the Eyre Highway near Eucla and Mundrabi...

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Image: Greg Barrington | CC BY-SA 3.0