The Eyre Highway commemorates the feat of Edward John Eyre, who braved hunger, thirst and attacks to travel from Adelaide to Albany in 1841.Starting in Norseman, the highway travels east across the Fraser Range before reaching Balladonia. Due to the abundance of local stone, the pioneer settlers at Balladonia erected stone fences which still stand a century later. From Balladonia, the highway travels straight across the plain to Caiguna, 182km away—one of the longest stretches of straight road in the world.
Cocklegiddy, east of Caiguna, is world famous among divers for its massive network of flooded caves which lie deep beneath the sand. World diving records have been set at Cocklebiddy Cave, 12km north of the highway. The ruins of an early Aboriginal mission lie on the edge of the Cocklebiddy township. The Eyre Bird Observatory is accessible by four-wheel drive track from the highway south to the coast.
Madura, where the highway climbs the escarpment, was once renowned for the magnificent Waler Horses bred on Madura Station for the Indian Army. Eucla, 13km west of the Western Australia/South Australia border, was the site of one of the busiest, yet loneliest, telegraph stations in Australia in the late 19th Century, when the telegraph was Australia’s main communications link with the world. The present-day township was established on the Hampton Escarpment after the original buildings were swallowed by sand dunes.
The evocative, sand-engulfed ruins of the original telegraph station lie close to the coast, a short distance away. A short drive from the settlement, Eucla National Park extends to the coastline and contains the vast Delisser Sandhills and Wilson Bluff, from where the awesome coastal cliffs extend unbroken for hundreds of kilometers to the east. Visitors to the park many see whales and seals close to the shore.
Photo courtesy: flickr
