Eyre Highway is a 1,664-kilometre (1,034 mi) highway linking Western Australia and South Australia via the Nullarbor Plain. Signed as National Highways 1 and A1, it forms part of Highway 1 and the Australian National Highway network linking Perth and Adelaide. It was named after explorer Edward John Eyre, who was the first European to cross the Nullarbor by land, in 1840–1841. Eyre Highway runs from Norseman in Western Australia, past Eucla, to the state border. Continuing to the South Australian town of Ceduna, it crosses the top of the Eyre Peninsula before reaching Port Augusta.
Eyre Highway
The Eyre Highway crosses the flat terrain of the Nullarbor Plain
Driving north along the Eyre Highway between Iron Knob and Port Augusta
Nullarbor roadhouse distances sign in 2008
The Nullarbor Plain is part of the area of flat, almost treeless, arid or semi-arid country of southern Australia, located on the Great Australian Bight coast with the Great Victoria Desert to its north. It is the world's largest single exposure of limestone bedrock, and occupies an area of about 200,000 square kilometres (77,000 sq mi). At its widest point, it stretches about 1,100 kilometres (684 mi) from east to west across the border between South Australia and Western Australia.
Nullarbor Plain, Australia
A road sign displaying the distance from Eucla and Ceduna (Regarding the information on the road sign, this stretch of the Eyre Highway lies not in the Nullarbor Plain, but south of the plain, in the Hampton bioregion of Western Australia, on the Roe Plains, somewhere around Mundrabilla. The Nullarbor Plain stretches behind the hills or, rather, the Hampton Tableland, seen in the background)
Sign defining the edge of the plain at the western side. (This photograph depicts Nullarbor Roadhouse, seen from the west. Nullarbor Roadhouse lies on the South Australian side of the Eyre Highway, at the eastern edge of the Nullarbor Plain as well as Nullarbor National Park, which both extend miles farther west into Western Australian territory.)
Rainbow over the Nullarbor Plain