There is an assumption that the Nullarbor Plain was named according to the Latin nulla arbor, “no tree”, after its vast and arid limestone plateau. Today most sources in the public access take this for granted, as in a recent issue of New Scientist magazine, which quotes the infamous colonial administrator Edward John Eyre. The first European to cross the plain, Eyre described it as “a hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of nature”. Appropriately, the comfort of a highway traversing the Nullarbor now bears his name. The Latin derivation of “Nullarbor” was once publicly disputed, however, in a 1922 exchange from the pages of Austral Ornithology. There, a Mr H. Stuart Dove remarks on a reference in Curr’s The Australian Race to a region called “Nullabar”. Dove also records the encounter of a Mr. Whitlock with an Indigenous dweller of the plain, who offered him the word boora, meaning “wind”. As Dove suggests, there are further etymological possibilities, including the Central Australian olupa, a candidate owing to the tendency to elide preceding consonants in various Aboriginal dialects. But the most compelling source for scepticism is attributed to Sir John Forrest, the first Premier of Western Australia and responsible for officially coining the “Nullarbor” name. According to one account, Forrest was aware of the popular presumption around his controversial bit of nomenclature:

“I heard him say that he was greatly amused that people should think he had made the name from the Latin nulla arbor (no tree), as he did not know enough Latin to coin such a word. It was an Aboriginal name, probably connected with nulla-nulla (a club).”

gabriel rolfe is a writer based in London. Until December 2025, he was a Vice-Chancellor's Scholar at the University of Cambridge, where his research concerned poetry, philology, and academic labour. His experimental poem/prose work, 'Nullarbor', was awarded the John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan Prize in 2022. Occasional writings – on short prose forms, colonial literature, and cultural geography – have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement.