You Need To See These Gorgeous Photos Of Bunda Cliffs In Australia Which Are Thought To Be The Edge Of The World

The Nullarbor Plain is actually the world's biggest monolithic limestone and it covers an area of 270,000 square km and extends approximately 1,000 km from the east to the west. 

This is an extremely flat area, so the Trans Australian Railway runs across its surface for roughly 483 kilometers in an entirely straight line. It's possible to see the areas of small depressions where infrequent rainfall has slowly dissolved away some of the limestone on the surface of the plain.

 You can also find places where underground caves or sinkholes have collapsed to create craters on the surface. However, for the most part, the plain is horizontally flat, and there are no trees, hence its Latin name.

 The Nullarbor Plain unexpectedly ends at the fascinating Bunda Cliffs, comprising a 200-kilometer-long cliff face curving around the Great Australian Bight.

Bunda Cliffs comprise the southern edge of the Nullarbor Plain which extends far inshore.  The white-colored base that can be found close to the bottom of the cliff face is Wilson Bluff Limestone.  

This chalky material emerged as part of a prehistoric seabed when Australia began to separate from Antarctica 65 million years ago. This Wilson Limestone is approximately 300 meters thick but only the upper portion can be seen in Bunda Cliffs. 

There are whitish, grey, or brown layers of limestone or crystalline rock above the white Wilson Limestone. It's possible to find marine fossils in some of these layers and these fossils include worms and mollusks showing their marine origin. Other layers are made up completely of marine sediment (foraminifera). 

The cliffs are covered by a solid layer of windblown sand laid down between 1.6 million and 100,000 years ago. The cliffs are approximately 60 to 120 meters high and transparent and can be seen from a couple of viewing points along the Eyre Highway east of Eucla and west of Nullarbor roadhouse.  But it's best if you view them from the air. The Eyre Highway, which is Australia's principal east-west link, follows the line of this breathtaking coast less than a kilometer inland. 

 This highway was named after Edward John Eyre, who with the company of John Baxter and three aboriginals, started out from Fowlers Bay in February 1841 trying to reach Albany in Western Australia across the Nullarbor Plain. Since they ran out of water and had to face extreme hardships, a rebellion began and two of the aboriginal boys shot John Baxter and ran away. Eyre and the remaining aboriginal named Wylie continued on their journey and managed to complete the crossing in June 1841. The Eyre Highway was opened a century after that, in 1941. More than a distance of 85 kilometers along the highway, there are five major observation points on the cliffs with signed, gravel access roads from the highway. 

The one on the western side is the most popular as visitors can walk to a piece of rock jutting out of the cliff that offers a spectacular view. At the eastern end of Bunda Cliffs, there is an observation point at the Head of the Bight where people can stay for hours observing Southern Right Whales in the ocean below the cliffs. 

These whales migrate from the sub-Antarctic in the fall and give birth to calves in inshore water along the southern Australian coast, and then stay in the area for months while the calves grow bigger. Head of the Bight is one of the breeding/mating points for these animals.