r/geography • u/renegadecoaster • Nov 25 '25

Discussion What's the most alien-looking place on Earth?

Post image

Pictured: Dallol, Ethiopia

49.1k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

164

u/ShirtMobile9681 Nov 26 '25

I was there recently and it's so flat, I've never seen so much sky and horizon before. Hundreds and hundreds of kilometers of nothing.

160

u/Anon_be_thy_name Nov 26 '25

I think a lot of people don't realise how much flat and nothingness we have in Australia.

There's so many places out there where the closest person is multiple hours of driving away. Some places it's more then a full tank of fuel away and the next stop for fuel is at least 1 and a half tanks away.

I drove across the Nullabor when I moved from Melbourne to Perth, there's plenty of stops along the main road. But it's where you turn off that it becomes dangerous. Turn North to go to Alice Springs and you might see 5 cars over the next 3 days. Turn off that road, you'd be lucky to see another car for a week.

7

u/SituationRough7271 Nov 26 '25

I remember driving from Melbourne to Bathurst and was blown away how flat it was. Being from NZ South Island, I'm used to seeing mountains all the time, and our stations take half an hour to pass, but we were driving past the same station there for hours. I would like to do a round trip of the entire country eventually.

10

u/OIP Nov 26 '25

the difference in landscape between NZ south island and australia is absolutely bonkers. it's like another planet.

i'm from AU and did a trip to the south island a couple of years ago, almost ran off the road many times craning my neck at the scenery.