For much of its length, the Eyre Highway can be described as a long and lonely road. While in the East you still find some towns like Kimba, Wudinna and Ceduna, the western three quarters is almost devoid of life.
What you will find is a number of roadhouses, a mixture of hotel, caravan park and garage. One or two of them are quite fancy (relatively speaking, that is), like Border Village, right at the border between South and Western Australia, but most of them are just plain dusty and boring. The mean distance between them is about 100 km., with the longest stretch being 190 km. (between Balladonia Roadhouse and Norseman). The stretch of road between Caiguna Roadhouse and Balladonia Roadhouse is known as the 90-mile straight. It's the longest stretch of straight road in Australia, 146.6 km. of asphalt without a single curve!
The Eyre Highway is a highway linking Western Australia and South Australia via the Nullarbor Plain. Signed as National Highway 1/A1, it forms part of Highway 1 and the Australian National Highway network linking Perth and Adelaide. It was named after explorer Edward John Eyre, who was the first to cross the Nullarbor by land.
The Eyre Highway starts at Norseman and ends in Port Augusta. The road, and Highway 1, then continues as Port Wakefield Road to Adelaide.
There are two parts of the Nullarbor crossing that are now distinct and separate routes to the current Eyre Highway - on the Western Australian side there is a mapped Old Coach Road that is further north towards the Trans Australia Railway line, and on the South Australian side the older highway route runs from Border Village to the Nullarbor Roadhouse - well away from the coast and running through the centre of the Nullarbor National Park.
Construction on the Eyre Highway first started in July 1941, and was completed six months later. First known as the Forrest Highway (named after John Forrest) Originally the roads that followed closely to the route were very rough in condition, and during the round-Australia road trials in the 1950s, movie newsreels would show cars on very sandy tracks. The current route of the highway has not been deviated from significantly during various upgrades to the highway. The differences between the condition of the road on either side of Eucla were notable as late as the mid-1980s - the last section was finally sealed on the South Australian section in 1976.
The Western Australian section of the Eyre Highway lies entirely on the Nullarbor Plain. The Nullarbor gets its name from Latin for 'no trees'. The typical view is that of a straight highway and practically unchanging flat saltbush covered terrain, although some parts are located on ridges. The population on this stretch was estimated at 86 as at the 2006 census and, apart from Eucla, no towns exist along the route. Roadhouses providing basic services such as petrol, food and bottled water are approximately 200 km (124 mi) to 300 km (186 mi) apart — not all are open 24 hours.
Because of its remoteness, some sections of the Highway serve as emergency airstrips for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. These airstrips are signposted, have runway "piano keys" painted on the road, and turnaround bays for small aircraft.
This section of the highway includes what is regarded as the longest straight stretch of road in the world, between Balladonia and Caiguna; the road stretches for 146.6 kilometres (91.1 mi) without turning.
Due to the high incidence of fatalities and accidents attributed to driver fatigue, some locations have opted into a program of providing free coffee to encourage drivers to take a break or rest on long journeys - in some cases some of the roadhouses above have become involved in that programme. At the same time, several signals across the road ask the drivers to take a break driving.
