Bunda
Cliffs is located on the Great Australian Bight in Southern Australia, is the
vast, featureless Nullarbor Plain (is part of the area of flat, almost
treeless, arid or semi-arid country of southern Australia), actually the
“world’s largest single piece of limestone”, covering more than an area of
270,000 square kilometers and stretching over 1,000 kilometers from the east to
the west. The area is so flat that the Trans Australian Railway runs across its
surface for about 483 kilometers in a fully straight line. However, on the
surface of the plain there are areas of slight depressions where sparse
rainfall has slowly dissolved away some of the limestone. There are also places
where underground caves or sinkholes have collapsed to form dents in the
surface. But mostly, the plain is horizontally flat and devoid of trees, as its
Latin name recommends. The “Nullarbor Plain” ends brusquely at the remarkable
“Bunda Cliffs” containing over 200-kilometer-long precipice curving around the
Great Australian Bight. Bunda Cliffs form the southern edge of the Nullarbor
Plain which extends far inland. The white colored base you see near the bottom
of the cliff face is Wilson Bluff Limestone. This chalky material made as part
of an ancient seabed when Australia started to separate from Antarctica 65
million years ago. This Wilson Limestone is up to 300 metres thick but only the
upper portion is visible in Bunda Cliffs. Moreover, above the white Wilson
Limestone are whitish, grey or brown layers of limestone or crystalline rock.
Few layers incorporate marine fossils as well as worms and molluscs indicating
their marine origin. So, other layers are created with entirely of marine
sediment (foraminifera). The Bunda cliffs are capped by a hardened layer of
windblown sand laid down between 1.6 million and 100,000 year ago.
These
majestically beautiful cliffs are some 60 to 120 meters high and sheer, and can
be easily viewed from numerous viewing points along the Eyre Highway east of
Eucla and west of Nullarbor roadhouse. However, they are better appreciated
from the air. The Eyre Highway, Australia’s main east / west link, follows the
line of this remarkable coast less than a kilometer inland. The highway was
named after Edward John Eyre, who along with John Baxter and three aboriginals,
set off from Fowlers Bay in 1841 in an attempt to reach Albany in Western
Australia across the Nullarbor Plain. Though, lack of water and dangerous
hardship gave rise to a mutiny and two of the aboriginal boys shot John Baxter
and absconded. Eyre and the third Aborigine, Wylie, continued on their journey
and completed the crossing in June 1841. The Eyre Highway was laid precisely a
century later in 1941. Therefore, more than a distance of 85 kilometers along
the highway, there’re 5 main lookouts on the cliffs with signed, gravel access
roads from the highway. The western lookout is the most admired because
tourists can walk to piece of rock jutting out of the cliff that provides a
vantage looking point. At the eastern end of Bunda Cliffs there is a lookout at
the Head of the Bight where tourists can stay for hours watching Southern Right
Whales in the ocean below the cliffs. Whereas on the Southern Right Whales
migrate from the sub-Antarctic in the autumn and give birth to calves in
inshore water along the southern Australian coast, and then remain in the
vicinity for months while the calves put on weight. Head of the Bight is one of
these calving-mating grounds. If you want to see them, then there is a charge
but then there is good viewing without environmental damage small price to pay.
