Stretching over 200,000 square kilometers across southern Australia, the vast, flat plains of the Nullarbor mark one of the world’s largest regions of limestone. It formed when an ancient shallow sea retreated some 14 million years ago.
Ultimately, this led to the familiar dry landscape of today, which has acted as a significant barrier for plants, animals, and poorly adapted colonial Victorian-era explorers who described it as “the sort of place one gets into in bad dreams.”
In contrast, the Mirning People of the Nullarbor and Great Australian Bight have lived for tens of thousands of years on this southern margin. They have watched the landscapes change, and sea levels fall and rise with the build-up and collapse of the last ice age about 20,000 years ago.
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