One of the most fascinating plant habitats I travelled through was the Nullabor. After first putting our car on the Indian Pacific train from Adelaide to Perth, we drove back from west to east, across the Nullabor, along the Eyre Highway.
One section of the approx. 1200km of highway is Australia’s longest straight road, which is 146.6km in one completely straight line. No bends, no hills, no traffic lights, no coffee shops, no rest stops. And plants growing all along the sides of the road.
The Nullabor is not a site most botanic artists go to for plants to draw and paint. The general assumption is that nothing grows out there. How wrong that is, as I discovered.
The plants of Australia’s arid lands offer a wealth of diversity and an amazing capacity to survive under harsh conditions.
My biggest challenge wasn’t to find them or draw them, they were growing all around us.
Owing to my own lack of knowledge, the problem was how to identify them. Also, with (almost!) no mobile service out there, it wasn’t possible to just take a photo and immediately look it up on the Internet!
There was one I found which I was not able to identify, but it had pretty pink tinged flowers and fleshy leaves. I drew it during a break on the Indian Pacific train journey when we stopped at Cook.
At Eucla, near the Western Australian-South Australian Border, we visited the Old Telegraph Station. The historic old building is now mostly buried in sand, but it was the plants that survive in those sand dunes that caught my attention.
At Border Village, South Australia, I found this Eucalyptus, which may have been planted there, but was doing well in the arid environment. I found plenty more of these as we drove further east.