Australia Highseas

The western Great Australian Bight opens off Western Australia's arid south coast, where the continent ends in long cliffs and rocky capes. Its waters join the southern Indian Ocean to the deep basin of the bight, leaving few sheltered bays along the limestone shore. The coast grades inland from saltbush and heath to the Nullarbor treeless plain, a hard setting for movement away from dependable water. The shore faces Southern Ocean swells, and inland soaks become the landmarks.

The coast offered no broad harbours, so vessels stayed offshore and used the bight as a passage between western and southern Australia. Southern right whales entered the region to calve, drawing nineteenth-century whalers before the bay was fully settled. Fishing, sealing and provisioning followed the same ocean features: deep water close to cliffs, seasonal migrants and safe landing places.

European ships entered the bight during the seventeenth century, although its shelterless coast offered little encouragement to land. Matthew Flinders charted the southern coast more accurately in 1802, giving later navigators a firmer account of the cliffs, capes and hazards. By the 1830s the western bight remained a maritime frontier, known from ships and coastal journeys rather than settled ports.