Qualla: Rawlinna, Western Australia

Rawlinna, Western Australia: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Claire Mercer, CC0. Thirty-three people. That is the entire population of the Rawlinna area, scattered across a corner of the Nullarbor Plain so flat and so empty that the railway crossing it does something no other railway on Earth manages: it runs perfectly straight for 478 kilometres. The track passes nearby without so much as a curve, a line so true that astronauts have picked it out from orbit, like a pencil mark drawn across the desert. Rawlinna sits beside it, 900 kilometres east of Perth and 350 kilometres short of the South Australian border, a cluster of about ten buildings holding their ground against a horizon that does not end.

Image: Claire Mercer | CC0

Rawlinna, Western Australia: A Line Drawn Across the World

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit W. Bulach, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Trans-Australian Railway opened in 1917, stitching the young federation together from Port Augusta to Kalgoorlie. Crossing the Nullarbor, it achieves the longest length of dead-straight track anywhere on the planet, measured by GPS in 1990 at 478.193 kilometres, running from ...

Image: W. Bulach | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rawlinna, Western Australia: The Largest Run in the Country

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0. Adjoining the line is Rawlinna Station, the largest operating sheep station in Australia. It sprawls across more than a million hectares, roughly the area covered by greater Sydney, and in a good season it carries up to 65,000 Merino sheep. There is no gentle way to gather a floc...

Image: Dietmar Rabich | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rawlinna, Western Australia: The Loneliest Hole in Golf

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original: Dietmar Rabich (Derivative work: SCHolar44), CC BY-SA 4.0. Then there is the golf. Rawlinna hosts one hole of Nullarbor Links, billed as the longest golf course in the world. Its eighteen holes are strung across 1,365 kilometres of the Eyre Highway and the railway corridor, one to a roadhouse or settlement, from Kalgoorlie in the west to...

Image: Original: Dietmar Rabich (Derivative work: SCHolar44) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rawlinna, Western Australia: What the Trains Left Behind

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0. Technology slowly emptied Rawlinna out. Concrete sleepers, welded rail, and mechanised maintenance removed the need for resident workers. Diesel trains, fast enough that crews no longer had to rest here, began stopping only to top up water in the passenger cars. When the whole Sy...

Image: Dietmar Rabich | CC BY-SA 4.0