Although relatively few east Australians have crossed the Nullarbor Plain into the more populous areas of Western Australia, this westernmost Australian state is by no means insignificant nor one described simply as beyond the black stump or in the back of beyond.
Western Australia is in fact Australia’s largest state and is more than 37 times the size of the smallest -- Tasmania. It is three and a half times the size of the American state of Texas, and 70 times the size of the Netherlands.
Planes and trains
There are domestic plane flights to Perth every day and its international airport is busy with globe-girdling travelers.
Across the continental desert heartland, through the Nullarbor Plain, the Indian Pacific roars between Sydney and Perth twice a week each way.
Across the Nullarbor
And yet a mark of Western Australia's isolation is that Perth, the capital, is at least two and a half hours by air from the nearest other Australian state capital, Adelaide in South Australia -- 2779 kilometres by road, equivalent to nearly 30 hours of non-stop driving at 100km/h.
Five hours flying from Sydney
It’s a transcontinental flight of about five hours from Sydney to Perth, and so distant by road hardly any take the isolated highways to, say, Kalgoorlie, just past the Nullarbor Plain, much less to Perth.
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- Photo courtesy of Great Southern Railway
