Order a dozen oysters in Ceduna and they may have been in the water that morning. This rough, salt-aired fishing port at the western base of the Eyre Peninsula has a reputation worth the long drive to test - Australia's oyster capital, where the cold, clean waters of the far-west coast grow some of the country's finest. But Ceduna is also a threshold. Head west from here on the Eyre Highway and you are pointed at the Nullarbor: this is the last significant town before the great empty crossing to Western Australia, and every traveller feels it.
The heart of a Ceduna visit is the foreshore, where Norfolk Island pines line the bay and a long jetty - built back in 1902 - reaches out over Murat Bay for walking, fishing and watching the light change. This is working water, not a postcard. Oysters are the star, and the surrounding bays are dotted with aquaculture leases; the town's annual Oysterfest, held since 1991 on the Labour Day long weekend, pulls more than six thousand people in for celebrity chefs, a street parade and a fireworks finale over the water. Beyond the oysters, deep-sea and tuna fishing draw anglers from as far as Port Lincoln. Come hungry.
There are really only two ways in. You drive - about seven hours from Adelaide along the A1, mostly through outback, via the Port Wakefield and Port Augusta highways onto the Eyre. Or you fly, on Rex Airlines from Adelaide, though the fares are not gentle and you will want to book a hire car before you arrive, not after. A practical warning for drivers: fuel here runs around twenty cents a litre dearer than in Adelaide, and it only climbs from here on. Fill up, because the next stretch is unforgiving. For connectivity, Telstra has mobile coverage in town; other networks may leave you dark.
Ceduna makes a fine base for short runs along the coast. Smoky Bay, 45 kilometres southeast on the scenic B100, is home to the celebrated Smoky Bay oysters - you can tour a working oyster shed and farm at the Aquaculture Park. Penong, 71 kilometres west, guards the surprising Windmill Museum, a field of restored wind pumps standing against the sky. Fowlers Bay, reached by a turnoff 106 kilometres west and a final stretch of good dirt road, is a sleepy holiday village that was once a busy port, with placards by the jetty telling its story. And 30 minutes south, Streaky Bay offers another small fishing port to explore.
Ceduna's pull is partly about what lies beyond it. This is the gateway to the Nullarbor, and the sense of standing at an edge is real - more than 240,000 vehicles a year roll through on the national highway, many of them about to commit to one of the world's great road crossings. There is a stranger pilgrimage too, for those with time and permission: roughly 500 kilometres northwest lies a remote former British nuclear test site from the 1950s, marked by a concrete obelisk, where vitrified sand and faint concentric blast rings still scar the ground. Reaching it takes some fifteen hours by private vehicle - a sobering detour into the outback's secret Cold War history before you turn back and point the bonnet west.
Ceduna sits at approximately 32.11 degrees south, 133.66 degrees east, on Murat Bay at the western edge of the Eyre Peninsula, the last major town before the Nullarbor crossing. From the air, look for the long jetty, the pine-lined foreshore, the bay studded with oyster-lease markers, and the deep-sea port of Thevenard just west on its cape. Ceduna Airport (ICAO YCDU) lies 2 km east beside the Eyre Highway, served by Rex from Adelaide. Skies are typically clear under the cold semi-arid climate; summer heat can be extreme.