Eucla - Fast Facts

Eucla
Much photographed ghost remnant of an old Telegraph Station

If there is any resonant image of the difficulty of human habitation on the Nullarbor Plain it has to be the old Telegraph Station at Eucla. Now it is no more than a few old stone walls slowly disappearing under mountainous white sand dunes on the edge of the Great Australian Bight. It is hard to think of any more lonely and isolated image in the whole of Australia.

Of course, like most images, it is nothing but an illusion. The Old Telegraph Station is not actually on the Nullarbor Plain but rather on the coastal plain which lies nearly one hundred metres below the level of the Nullarbor. And the image of Eucla as a solitary ruin is given the lie by the small township on the top of the escarpment.

Located 11 km from the South Australian border, 1430 km east of Perth (it is 492 km west of Ceduna and 713 km east of Norseman) and 87 m above sea level, modern Eucla is the largest settlement on the Nullarbor Plain with a service station, hotel–motel, a caravan park, a Royal Flying Doctor base, an ambulance, a hospital, some government agencies and a police station.