Go Travel Magazine

Welcome to Forrest, Western Australia. Population: two. A remote airstrip on the Nullarbor Plain managed by the town’s only inhabitants, two crazy ex-tour leaders, Suzy Browne and Paul Conway.

With a postcode of their own (that’d be 6434) and a whole lot of desert for their neighbours, Suzy and Paul live in one of the most remote towns in Australia. “Sometimes we just go out onto the airstrip and do wheelies because no one can hear us scream. And no one can tell us not to!” says Suzy, laughing.

Australia has some of the most formidable and desolate landscape on earth. Only 14 per cent is forested and 70 per cent is arid or semi-arid. The majority of Aussies are clustered on the coast, and while we know that vast areas of our country are remote and isolated, few of us have experienced it firsthand.

The Nullarbor Plain is one of the most famous of Australia’s desolate places, and a trip across it is one of our most iconic road journeys. The plain sits on a 250,000 square metre chunk of limestone, the largest of its kind in the world that, unfortunately, isn’t too conducive to growing anything more than a few random saltbushes and low-lying scrub. The actual word ‘Nullarbor’ is derived from the Latin for ‘no trees’. It is, in short, a very, very treeless place.

The turnoff to Forrest is approximately halfway across the Nullarbor Plain, and 120km inland via an ‘unconstructed’ track. Basically, you gotta bush-bash it to get there by road in a hard core 4WD. “It is so hard describe Forrest in words. It’s an experience, not a place. When you get out of the cities and come somewhere like Forrest, it blows your mind. There is a whole ‘other’ Australia that so many of us have never seen, that is so awesome,” says Suzy.

Tired of touring Australia and the South Pacific by air with elderly passengers, Suzy threw in her tour leader job and applied for a 12-month position as Airport Manager at Forrest. She was old-peopled out, and knew she had to find something pretty special to keep her entertained. Having been to Forrest a few times before, Suzy says she just couldn’t get it out of her head.

“The outback is magic. Because the desert is so flat, you sit on the water tank with a glass of wine and watch the sun set on one side and the moon rise on the other. The storms, the stars – wow! The weather out here is so incredibly beautiful; there’s no way you can forget about it,” she says.

She convinced her friend Paul, a tour leader in remote Cape York, to apply with her for the dual position. A few months later they found themselves managing Forrest, the largest tarred and lit airstrip outside the capital cities, and the emergency landing stop for Virgin Airways.

Forrest was built in 1917 as one of fifty maintenance stops on the 1700km steel ribboned Trans Continental Railway from Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta. As technology improved, the dodgy high maintenance tracks were gradually upgraded, shutting down many of the new townships.

However, in the age of early aviation, Forrest had its uses. Western Australian Airlines began using it as its overnight stop on the 16-hour flight between Perth and Adelaide in 1929. Thus began Forrest’s life as a vital stopover point for light aircraft travelling across the vast Nullarbor, providing fuel, terminal facilities and accommodation.

Accessible by plane, train and automobile, when the traffic is flowing, Forrest is not so lonely. “Three weeks is the longest we’ve gone without seeing anyone but each other.
We are both very intense and determined people, which means we definitely clash at times. Those times are the hardest because there is nowhere to go except into the space and more aloneness. But the great thing is, Paul doesn’t tend to talk, and I am a talker. In a town of two that works really well,” says Suzy.

When they are desperate for a break, Paul and Suzy lock up Forrest, and drive for three hours to Eucla, on the coast. “We drive at night after the day’s work, just to see the ocean. We camp out under the stars on the beach, and then head back at dawn for any arrivals that day. After being in the desert so long it’s amazing to be near the water,” says Suzy.

Suzy and Paul order their groceries from Kalgoorlie and get them delivered on the Indian Pacific Train, which runs four times a week between Sydney and Perth. The Indian Pacific doesn’t stop so they have to do the whole Chariots of Fire thing, running alongside the train to collect their mail and groceries. “If we’re lucky, the drivers will chuck a newspaper out the window as they go past, but it sucks trying to catch the cartons of beer,” Suzy says.

Because of its isolation, and Suzy and Paul’s hospitality, Forrest is a tourist destination in its own right, attracting an incredible array of visitors. “The isolation is harder to deal with than I thought,” Suzy says. “You rely on who comes in, and you have to wait for the world to come to you. But then everything will change in a split second and you forget you were ever alone.”

The desert Aborigines from Tjuntjunjarra drop into Suzy’s place for cups of tea and cake on their way between settlements. They remember being removed from Maralinga, the site of Australia’s controversial nuclear testing between 1952 and 1963. Suzy says they are quite shy, but occasionally speak of their memories of being transported from the nuclear testing site in strange vehicles and trains, to other desert areas.

Other recent visitors include a couple of young Parisian pilots, who hired a light plane and flew to Australia to clock up their flying hours. After Suzy and Paul took them high-speed dingo chasing, they didn’t want to leave. “They were going nuts about the dingoes! They were blown away by the dark and so much space,” says Suzy. “We took them four-wheel driving into the desert to see the giant eagles’ nests and the awesome meteorite sites. There is just so much cool stuff in the desert that is indescribable.”

Suzy and Paul have also had their fair share of science nerds to hang out with.
Aside from its aviation duties, Forrest functions as a meteorological watch station, and as part of the new tsunami warning system, has had its seismic station upgraded.

“Recently we had a London meteorite scientist here (who called everyone ‘Lord’ and ‘peeps’) and three scientists from Prague, who couldn’t speak much English. We did a camp oven for dinner by the fire, and as the sun went down they jokingly said, ‘Oh yes, we’ll have a gin and tonic with sunset,’ thinking we were a bunch of yokels! So I delivered six Blue Sapphires with tonic and a wedge of lemon. Yokels we ain’t!”