Forrest exists because of a line on the ground. It was established in 1916 during the building of the Trans-Australian Railway, the steel ribbon that finally joined the eastern colonies to the west and helped knit the new nation together. The settlement sits squarely on the most extraordinary stretch of that line - the longest dead-straight section of railway anywhere in the world, running 478 kilometres without the faintest curve. It was named for Sir John Forrest, the explorer who became Western Australia's first Premier and who, more than anyone, championed the railway as the iron promise that would bind the west to the rest of Australia at federation.

The land here is so flat and the skies so clear that Forrest found a second purpose overhead. Its airfield opened in 1929 as the overnight stop on the first scheduled passenger air service between Perth and Adelaide, flown by West Australian Airways. For aircraft with short range and long distances to cross, this lonely strip became indispensable - a guaranteed place to land, refuel, and rest in the middle of a continent that offered almost nowhere else to do so. The role never entirely faded. The airfield has stayed in continuous use ever since, and to this day its two sealed runways, parking hangar, and Avgas and Jet A1 pumps make it a vital fuel stop for light aircraft tackling the long flight across the Nullarbor.

For decades, Forrest did important work that few ever saw. A Bureau of Meteorology office operated here, and right up until the 1990s its staff released weather balloons twice every day, sending instruments up into the sky to measure the atmosphere over one of the most data-sparse regions of the country. Those readings fed forecasts for aircraft and for the nation. The last balloon went up in March 1995, when the office finally closed - one more function quietly switched off in a place that has spent a century slowly emptying out. The plain itself is unforgiving: though Forrest sits only about 120 kilometres from the cooling influence of the Southern Ocean, on 13 January 1979 the thermometer here reached 49.8 degrees Celsius, among the hottest temperatures ever recorded anywhere in Australia.

What remains is a study in beautiful isolation. The great passenger train that still crosses the line, the Indian Pacific, rolls straight past without stopping. By road, Forrest can be reached only along rough unsealed tracks branching off the Eyre Highway near Eucla and Mundrabilla, more than a hundred kilometres away over rugged country. The cottages can be booked by the rare overnight visitor, and the runway lights still wait for traffic. In November 2024, the filmmaker Yannick Jamey captured all of this in a short documentary about the few residents who keep the place alive, and gave it the title that fits Forrest best of all - the long, patient wait of an outpost that the modern world has very nearly, but not quite, left behind.