Eucla

A small community situated 13 km west of the WA/SA border on the WA side on the Great Australian Bight.

Eucla 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, in spite of the fact it was built on the coastal plain and not the elevated plateau of the Nullarbor.

Built in 1877, it is now 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.


Koonalda Cave

Koonalda Cave features a huge 40 metre entrance into a 20 metre drop which eventually goes to a lake over 100 metres below the surface of the Nullarbor. There are ladders and walkways but the entrance to the cave is dangerous and entry should only be attempted by experienced speleologists.


Bunda cliffs

Lining the shore of the Nullarbor Plain on the South Australian side for 200 km right to the WA border, the iconic cliffs and views from the lookouts along them give travellers some visual relief from the flat and treeless plain.


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Where is it?

1,436 km east of Perth


Shipwrecks

The cutter Bunyip was blown shore and lost in a gale, Twilight Cove near Eucla on 24 May 1877.

When Edward John Eyre was make his historic crossing of the Nullabor Plain in 1841 he came across a large quantity of wreckage on shore in the vicinity of present day Scorpion Bight. An Aboriginal legend claimed that a ship had been lost nearby many years earlier. More wreckage, supposed from this vessel was located in the mid 1970's. She may have been a sealer or a whaler.

An unidentified wreck was reported in 1976 near the abandoned Eyre Telegraph Repeater Station, reinforcing Aboriginal legend that a vessel had been wrecked around the 1840s. The vessel could be linked with the loss of the wahler Carib, supposedly wrecked on this barren coastline in May 1837.

Early in December 1898, the upper part of a deck house bearing the name "Neck, Bremen" washed ashore at Scorpion Bight, 206 km south east of Eucla.


History of Eucla

The area was passed through by explorer Eyre in 1841 on his epic journey from Fowler Bay in South Australia to Albany in Western Australia. In 1873 the Muir brothers established pastoral runs here. An overland telegraph repeater station was established in 1877 and the town was proclaimed in 1885 although land had already been set aside as early as 1873. In the 1890s the town experienced two consecutive rabbit plagues and someone decided to bring in cats to control the rabbit population.

The area was then overrun by feral cats. In an attempt to drum up a bit of publicity for the town, a story was spread in 1971 that a half naked blonde girl had gone feral and was living with the kangaroos. How many visitors this attracted to the town remains a mystery but the press gave the story plenty of coverage.

The Aboriginal name for the Eucla townsite is said to be Chiniala. The origin of the name Eucla is unsure though there are a number of suggestions. One source states that Yinculyer was the Aboriginal name for the area. Another source states the name Eucla is derived from the words 'yer' - bright, and 'coloya' - fire. When Edward John Eyre passed through the area in 1841, Eyre recorded sighting the rise of the planet Venus; these words are said to be those used by the Aborigines who accompanied the explorer to describe the event they witnessed in the night sky. It must be noted here that Eyre gave no names to geographical features or localities during his walk.

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