Where Asia Ends, and Australia Begins: The Story of a Magical Boundary in the Lombok Strait – #01
The Story of a Magical Boundary in the Lombok Strait
Somewhere between Bali and Lombok lies a stretch of sea that, at first glance, looks perfectly ordinary, deep, blue, and playful under the waves. Tourists fly over it in planes and cross it by fast boats, rarely guessing that right there, in that crack of the ocean, runs one of the strangest and most important boundaries on the planet. A boundary invisible to the eye, yet sharp as a machete through the jungle: the Wallace Line.
This peculiar line, discovered in the 19th century by British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, does not divide nations, languages, or cultures, but entire worlds. On the western side, in Bali and Java, lives wildlife typical of Asia: monkeys, tigers (once), elephants, several species of deer, and even orangutans just a little farther away on Sumatra and Borneo. On the eastern side, already starting from Lombok, a completely different world begins. A world belonging to Australia and Oceania, filled with brightly colored parrots, unusual flightless birds, and ancient reptiles such as the legendary Komodo dragon.
How can a boundary change so abruptly?
The answer lies in the deep. The Lombok Strait is one of the deepest oceanic trenches in the region. During the ice ages, when sea levels around the world dropped by as much as 120 meters, many Indonesian islands were connected by land. Bali was an extension of the Asian continent. But Lombok, never. The strait was simply too deep to ever form a land bridge. And so animals east and west of the channel lived in eternal isolation, each on its own island, each in its own world.
While Asian species roamed freely across the landmass that once connected today’s Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, the eastern archipelago was like a mosaic of islands scattered across the ocean. On these islands, evolution crafted wonders over the centuries: dwarf elephants, giant lizards, birds that never learned to fly, and even small human beings, Homo floresiensis, the so-called “hobbits” of Flores.
Along this boundary, where Bali leans toward Lombok across a narrow stretch of sea, worlds meet but do not mix. On one island you’ll see macaques and deer, and just a few kilometers away, a completely different fauna appears, as if you had suddenly crossed from one hemisphere to another.
That is why scientists still view the Wallacea region as living proof of how profoundly evolution depends on geography and how delicate the uniqueness of each island truly is. And for travelers, the Lombok Strait remains one of those places where nature whispers an ancient story: that boundaries are not drawn by human hands, but shaped over millions of years, quietly, patiently, and relentlessly. Through the depth of one extraordinary sea.
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