Qualla: Nullarbor Regional Reserve

Nullarbor Regional Reserve: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name is a flat Latin joke that turned out to be true: nullus arbor, no tree. Stand anywhere in the Nullarbor Regional Reserve and the horizon does something the eye is not built for - it simply runs out, an unbroken line of bluebush and saltbush curving away in every direction with nothing tall enough to break it. This is one of the largest single slabs of limestone on the planet, a seabed lifted whole from the ocean, and the reserve protects an enormous wedge of it some 300 kilometres west of Ceduna. Above ground it looks like nothing - a plain so featureless that early travellers measured progress in days, not landmarks. Below ground, it is one of the most extraordinary cave landscapes on Earth.

Image: Tentotwo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nullarbor Regional Reserve: The Hollow Plain

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Bowden from Tallinn, Estonia, CC BY-SA 2.0. Rain that falls on the Nullarbor does not run off; there are almost no rivers here. Instead it sinks through the porous limestone, and over millions of years it has dissolved the rock into a honeycomb. The reserve and the adjoining Nullarbor National Park together protect the wor...

Image: Tony Bowden from Tallinn, Estonia | CC BY-SA 2.0

Nullarbor Regional Reserve: A Line Drawn by Engineers

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The reserve's northern edge is one of the strangest borders in the world: the Trans-Australian Railway, which here runs dead straight for 478 kilometres without a single curve - the longest stretch of straight railway track anywhere on the planet. Strung along that line are the n...

Image: Tentotwo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nullarbor Regional Reserve: Life on the Surface

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cathcartw, CC BY-SA 4.0. Nothing about the Nullarbor invites soft living, and the animals that endure here have made hard bargains with the heat. The southern hairy-nosed wombat digs deep, cool burrows in the sandy ground and waits out the worst of the day below the surface, emerging to graze the bluebus...

Image: Cathcartw | CC BY-SA 4.0

Nullarbor Regional Reserve: A Land of Many Claims

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The reserve sits inside a complicated mosaic of country. Its corners brush against the Yalata Indigenous Protected Area and the Maralinga Tjarutja Aboriginal lands to the south and north - country that carries the long memory of the Anangu and other Western Desert peoples, and th...

Image: Tentotwo | CC BY-SA 3.0