In July 1979, the world held its breath as NASA's 77-ton Skylab space station made an uncontrolled atmospheric reentry. While original calculations pointed toward a watery grave in the Indian Ocean, orbital drag variations caused the station to overshoot, raining incandescent titanium tanks and oxygen cylinders over Western Australia. Down on the ground, the sparse expanse of the Nullarbor Plain was home to vast cattle and sheep stations, where long-haul livestock convoys moved thousands of merino sheep along remote dusty highways.
As international telemetry confirmed that Skylab's trajectory was shifting inland toward Esperance and the surrounding rangelands, local authorities and transport coordinators scrambled to notify station owners and road trains. Drivers hauling fragile livestock faced unprecedented hazard warnings: falling orbital wreckage. Panic over potential sonic booms, impact craters, and hot metal led dispatchers to halt or reroute several large sheep transport trains away from the projected impact corridor.
Although no people or livestock were struck, large chunks of space debris peppered pastures, including a massive piece of oxygen tank landing near a sheep shearing shed. The Shire of Esperance famously issued NASA a $400 littering fine, but for the outback drovers who spent days recalculating livestock feed stops and detouring around cosmic fall zones, July 1979 remained the season outer space crashed their roundups.