Authorities say the Eyre Highway — Western Australia's main freight route with the eastern states — could be closed for up to three days due to bushfires.
A 370-kilometre stretch of road between the Goldfields town of Norseman and Caiguna was closed on Wednesday afternoon after bushfires jumped the highway near Balladonia.
The Department of Fire and Emergency Services [DFES] and Main Roads WA have urged motorists to avoid the area, with people travelling west of Balladonia being redirected to Norseman.
The fire was first reported on February 7 but was upgraded to Watch and Act level on Wednesday as a heatwave spread across WA's Goldfields region, with temperatures hitting a high of 44.6 degrees Celsius at Norseman.
More than 20,000 hectares of the Great Western Woodlands — the largest temperate woodland left on Earth — has been destroyed.
The cause of the fire is yet to be determined.
DFES Superintendent Damien Pumphrey said weather conditions were expected to ease as firefighters worked to strengthen containment lines.
"As that fire has jumped the Eyre Highway, our key focus now is on consolidating the safety along the highway," he said.
"Today there's a significant amount of appliances and machinery being moved into that area, with a focus on clearing the debris along the sides of the highway from that fire passage."
Farmers take in livestock
It is the second time the Eyre Highway has been closed for an extended period this summer after bushfires near Fraser Range.
The closure of the only sealed road linking WA and South Australia has caused significant disruptions for freight providers and travellers.
Sam Starcevich, a farmer at Salmon Gums, said she had taken in livestock on transports heading across the border.
"We ended up with about 1,490 sheep here, two road trains, and a few other farmers around the Salmon Gums area took the others," she said.
"You just do it don't you. You don't think about it.
"You couldn't leave the sheep on the trucks in the conditions we have had over the last few days."
It has been four years since raging bushfires closed the Eyre Highway for 12 days, trapping hundreds of motorists at remote roadhouses on the Nullarbor amid scorching temperatures during the holiday season.
Covering more than 90,000 square kilometres between Norseman and the WA border, the Shire of Dundas is often forced to manage multiple remote fires.
Shire President Laurene Bonza said the fire had started more than a fortnight ago but the council didn't have the resources to fully extinguish it.
"We just get the regular word; 'monitor it' and then it runs into something quite large," she said.
"As in our 2019-20 fires that burned through 532,000 hectares; a significant patch of our Great Western Woodlands.
"It does immense damage to our diversity around here."
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