Balladonia, WA: What happened when Skylab crashed in the Australian outback?

In July 1979, the Skylab space station crashed to earth around Balladonia, Western Australia. A small museum inside the Balladonia roadhouse on the Nullabor drive from Perth to Adelaide tells the story of the ensuing race to find Skylab fragments.

The Balladonia roadhouse is a particularly gimmicky roadhouse – and Australia’s roadhouses aren’t exactly shy about reaching for the gimmicks. The Stuart Highway roadhouses in the Northern Territory throw up camel rides at Stuarts Well, UFOs at Wycliffe Well and bizarre statues at Aileron.

The roadhouses of the Nullarbor between Ceduna in South Australia and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia like a good gimmick too. After all, they’ve clubbed together to host the Nullarbor Links – the world’s longest golf course.

But as gimmicks go, it’s pretty hard to top a crashed space station. And that’s what you can find at the Balladonia roadhouse in Western Australia.

Don’t want to drive the Nullarbor? Then consider a ten day camping adventure tour from Perth to Adelaide (or in the opposite direction).

Perth to Balladonia, WA

At the western end of the Nullarbor, the 938km drive from Perth to the Balladonia roadhouse takes just over ten hours. From the Western Australian city of Kalgoorlie, the Perth to Balladonia drive is about four-and-a-quarter hours or 405km. It’s fair to say that Balladonia is in the middle of nowhere and doesn’t get much attention.

That all changed in July 1979, when a media circus broke loose at the remote Balladonia roadhouse. The Skylab space station had crashed to earth. The debris was scattered around the Western Australian outback.

Skylab at the museum in Balladonia, Western Australia — The museum at the Balladonia roadhouse on the Nullarbor drive from Perth to Adelaide tells the story of the Skylab space station crash in 1979. Photo by David Whitley/ Australia Travel Questions

Balladonia roadhouse museum

A mini-museum inside the Balladonia roadhouse tells the story, largely with models and newspaper clippings. The Skylab space station, weighing 77,000kg, was one of the largest things humans have ever fired into space. By July 1979 it had entered an unstable orbit. No-one quite knew where it was going to crash.

NASA had limited control, but tried to stop Skylab crashing into a heavily populated area. Eventually, NASA aimed for the Indian Ocean.

The biggest section of Skylab did indeed crash into the Indian Ocean. The the rest of it, however, broke up over largely uninhabited south-western Australia.

Guests staying at the Balladonia Motel at the time reported seeing what looked like a fireworks display. Numerous chunks of the space station landed nearby in the vast surrounding sheep station. And, in a fabulous piece of Australian trivia, US President Jimmy Carter phoned the owner of the Balladonia roadhouse to apologise.

That phone line was rather busy, as reporters from all over the world fought on it. The media had rushed to Balladonia, trying to find out what had happened to Skylab.

Skylab space station on the Nullarbor

The San Francisco Examiner had offered a $10,000 prize. The first person to bring an authentic piece of Skylab to its office would get the money. This meant that trophy hunters were descending on the Nullarbor scrub in their four wheel drive vehicles.

The farce continued with the arrival of Miss America, who was in Perth for the Miss Universe contest. Her manager thought it would be a great publicity stunt. The photos inside the museum spent her time on the Nullarbor looking very bored and fending off flies.

A 17-year-old from Esperance eventually won the big prize. He managed to get the treasured fragments from a sheep paddock, and get it over to California. But there was plenty of competition – parts of Skylab were taken away almost as quickly as they landed.

This didn’t stop the local shire council issuing NASA with a $400 littering fine, however. The fine, apparently, remains unpaid.

The parts of the space station contained within the museum are replicas. As is the big chunk of Skylab jutting out of the roadhouse roof. The media attention has long gone and Balladonia is back to being a stop of Australia’s most notorious driving route.

Accommodation in Balladonia, WA

A range of accommodation is available at the Balladonia Hotel Motel. This includes backpacker dorms, a caravan park and optimistically-labelled ‘deluxe suites’. Entry to the museum inside the roadhouse building is free. Heading east from Balladonia, you get the joy of spending 146.6km on the longest straight road in Australia.