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Ooldea is a tiny settlement in
South AustraliaSouth Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
. It is on the eastern edge of the
Nullarbor PlainThe Nullarbor Plain is part of the area of flat, almost treeless, arid or semi-arid country of southern Australia, located on the Great Australian Bight coast with the Great Victoria Desert to its north. It is the world's largest single piece of limestone, and occupies an area of about...
, 863 km west of
Port Augusta-Electricity generation:Electricity is generated at the Playford B and Northern power stations from brown coal mined at Leigh Creek, 250 km to the north...
on the
Trans-Australian RailwayThe Trans-Australian Railway crosses the Nullarbor Plain of Australia from Port Augusta in South Australia to Kalgoorlie in Western Australia...
. Ooldea is 143 km from the bitumen
Eyre HighwayThe Eyre Highway is a highway linking Western Australia and South Australia via the Nullarbor Plain. Signed as National Highway 1/A1, it forms part of Highway 1 and the Australian National Highway network linking Perth and Adelaide. It was named after explorer Edward John Eyre, who was the first to...
.
It was the site of a mission for Aboriginal children which was visited twice by
Norman TindaleNorman Barnett Tindale was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist and entomologist. Born in Perth, his family moved to Tokyo from 1907 to 1915, where his father worked as an accountant at the Salvation Army mission in Japan. Soon after returning to Australia, Tindale got a job at the South...
and was home for many years to
Daisy BatesDaisy May Bates, CBE was an Irish Australian journalist, welfare worker and lifelong student of Australian Aboriginal culture and society. She was known among the native people as 'Kabbarli' .-Early life:...
, both concerned with understanding and protecting Aboriginal culture.
Ooldea was an important camp during construction of the railway, as it is near a permanent waterhole, first discovered by Europeans when
Ernest GilesWilliam Ernest Powell Giles , best known as Ernest Giles, was an Australian explorer who led three major expeditions in central Australia.- Early life :...
used it in 1875. It was also important as the railway siding servicing
nuclear testingBritish nuclear tests at Maralinga occurred between 1955 and 1963 at the Maralinga site, part of the Woomera Prohibited Area, in South Australia. A total of seven major nuclear tests were performed, with approximate yields ranging from 1 to 27 kilotons of TNT equivalent...
at
MaralingaMaralinga, South Australia in the remote western areas of South Australia was the home of the Maralinga Tjarutja, a southern Pitjantjatjara Indigenous Australian people. Maralinga was the site of the secret British nuclear tests in the 1950s. The site measures about 3,300 km² in area...
.
The town was dependent on the Tea and Sugar Train for the delivery of supplies until 1996 when the train was withdrawn. The longest dead straight section of railway line in the world starts west of Ooldea before Watson at the 797 km post and continues to a point between Loongana and Nurina, a distance of 478 km.
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