Nullarbor Plain

The Nullarbor has a way of defeating metaphor — any description sounds like hyperbole until you're actually doing it, and then you understand it's something more primal. The longest straight stretch of sealed road in the world runs for 146.6 kilometres without bending. The Eyre Highway, from Norseman to Ceduna, crosses a treeless plain of limestone that was once the floor of a shallow sea, and covers 1,200 kilometres of essentially nothing except the horizon, the road and the sky.

This is where Australians go to understand the scale of their country. The transcontinental train, the Indian Pacific, crosses the Nullarbor on the longest straight railway line in the world — three days from Perth to Adelaide. The roadhouses along the highway are genuinely important — fill your tank and your water bottles at every stop.

Two extraordinary things transform the Nullarbor from ordeal to destination. From May to October, Southern Right Whales come to the Head of the Bight cliffs to calve — you can walk to the clifftop viewing platform and look directly down onto mothers with newborns in the protected bay below. And at night, 400 kilometres from the nearest city light, the Milky Way appears in its full band, so dense and present you can read by it. Bring a good sleeping bag, pull off the road and look up.