Perth to Alice Springs road trip guide: Driving distance & best stops

Perth to Alice Springs road trip: Across the Nullarbor

The next section of the Perth to Alice Springs road trip is one of the most dreaded drives in Australia. Crossing the Nullarbor Plain is gruelling, and the drive from Norseman to Ceduna is 1,201km long.

However, there’s a surprisingly decent selection of quirky attractions along the Nullarbor drive.

First up, you can play the world’s longest golf course, the Nullarbor Links, which stretches all the way from Kalgoorlie to Ceduna. Most of the holes are at roadhouses along the way.

Most of the Nullarbor’s best attractions are in or near those roadhouses. 

Balladonia has a mini-museum about the Skylab space station, the enormous Cocklebiddy Cave is near Cocklebiddy and Eucla offers an evocative ruined telegraph station amongst the dunes.

Where is the best place to stay on the Nullarbor?

The best place for an overnight stop on the Nullarbor drive is either Eucla or Border Village, the first settlement on the South Australian side of the border.

The single best stop on the Nullarbor is Head of Bight near the Nullarbor Roadhouse.

Here, you see towering cliffs to one side, dazzling white dunes to the other and southern right whales in the Great Australian Bight below.

Then, just before Ceduna, comes Penong, Here, you can admire the strange collection of windmills at the Penong Windmill Museum. But you’re better off taking the small detour to surfer haven Cactus Beach via the curiously pink Lake MacDonnell.

Click through to the next section: Ceduna and the Gawler Ranges.