Towns in Australia

Exploring Australia, town by town

Madura WA

Madura

Postcode: 6443

Madura is a small roadhouse community located on the Eyre Highway in Western Australia, on the Nullarbor Plain. It is 1,253 kilometres (779 mi) from Perth.

Madura was settled in 1876 as a place to breed quality cavalry horses for the British Indian Army for use in the Northwest Frontier region of India (now part of Pakistan). The horses were shipped from the coast at Eucla. (Cervantes, north of Perth, was also used for breeding.) The site was chosen as it was one of the few with free flowing bore water in the area. Madura’s name is believed to originate from Madurai in Tamil Nadu, called Madura at that time.

Like other locations in the Nullarbor Plain area, the area consists of nothing more than a roadhouse, open 6:30am to 8:30pm each day. 2 km west of Madura is a scenic lookout with sweeping views of the Madura Pass across the escarpment and the Roe Plains. Natural blowholes may also be found nearby. The area is used for pastoral purposes, mainly sheep rearing.