As 11-year-old Nicholas Lavrentiadis travelled across the country on a train towards the dry, treeless plains of the Nullarbor in the 1950s he imagined a gruesome death awaited him.

But what he found instead was a young school teacher he would never forget, who inspired a love of plants and animals.

A month after arriving from Greece, without speaking a word of English, the Lavrentiadis family left the Bonegilla Migrant Camp in Victoria in 1954 and were sent to the tiny settlement of Reid on the Nullarbor in Western Australia.

Reid existed from 1919 to the early 1970s before it dissolved back into the desert.

Today, few traces at all remain of the town.

Working the line somewhere near Reid on the Trans-Australian Railway. ( Supplied: Eric McCrum )

Sleepers and saltbush

But in 1954, when the Lavrentiadises arrived, Reid was a dusty hamlet on the Trans-Australian Railway where around a dozen families lived among the saltbush to maintain the railway line.

"My father, and the other half-dozen or dozen or so men were taught how to replace sleepers … [they did] repair work on the railway line," Mr Lavrentiadis said.

There was also a school in Reid where the children of the railway workers were educated and in 1954 a young teacher, Eric McCrum, arrived.

Mr McCrum, an enthusiastic naturalist, wasn't daunted by the isolation.

"In those days I was a loner, I was quite happy being on my own" Mr McCrum said.

Eric McCrum, aged just 19, in his first year of teaching, with all the students at the Reid school. ( Supplied: Eric McCrum )

A different view of the desert

Like the protagonist of Wake In Fright, 19-year-old Mr McCrum was fresh out of teachers college when he was sent to Reid to complete his national teaching service.

But unlike the film, Mr McCrum depicted a corner of the Australian outback with his camera — not as a disturbing feverish nightmare, but as a welcoming expanse alive with birds and plants.

He had bought a 35mm camera before setting off for the Nullarbor and the photographs he took in 1954, published here for the first time, are some of the few records testifying that Reid ever existed.

Eric McCrum's bicycle on a track on the Nullarbor, near Reid. ( Supplied: Eric McCrum )

When he wasn't teaching, Mr McCrum rode a bicycle across the plains.

"I just picked a direction out, north, east, south, west, whatever — to see if I could find anything," he said.

He would scan the horizon for signs of life, listening for a change in tone of his tyres that would mean there was a cave or blow hole underfoot.

"Dad had sent me a rope, whenever I was going into a blow hole, he insisted that I had the rope tied around my bicycle at one end, and the other end around my waist. So if anything happened to me, people would find me."

Eric McCrum finds a Sturt desert pea on the Nullarbor. ( Supplied: Eric McCrum )

Friendship blooms

But he wasn't always alone — small Nicholas Lavrentiadis was often by his side.

"I learnt English from him, everywhere he went I was there asking questions, I learnt English quicker than the other kids and he learnt a bit of Greek as well," Mr Lavrentiadis said.

With Mr Lavrentiadis as class translator, Mr McCrum took his students out to collect flower samples, draw plants, and catch lizards.

As well as teaching them English, he taught the children to observe and understand the strange landscape they found themselves in.

"I ran nature study in the classroom virtually every day," Mr McCrum said.

The Lavrentiadis family in 1954. Mr McCrum took photos of all the families in Reid, and most sent copies of the photos back to their relatives in Europe. ( Supplied: Eric McCrum )

"Whenever a bird outside [the classroom] made a noise, I'd put my right hand up in the air, and the kids knew that they had to say what was the noise that Mr McCrum heard."

Painful memories

Mr Lavrentiadis has fond memories of Reid, especially when the sugar train would stop to deliver supplies and people would throw lollies out the window for the children.

But for his parents it was a tough existence, with no roads, no shops, and dry earth that would not grow a thing.

At the end of 1954 his family found a way to leave and they moved to Adelaide.

"I had tears in my eyes, I can still picture my dog running alongside the train, chasing the train, that was painful," Mr Lavrentiadis said.

Fooling around in Reid. ( Supplied: Eric McCrum )

Mr McCrum also left at the end of the year. The Department of Education moved him to another remote school in need of a teacher who could tolerate the conditions.

Eventually he would go on to educate thousands of children about nature and animals at the Perth Zoo and receive an Order of Australia for service to environmental education, conservation, and natural history.

Reconnecting with the past

Later, years after he'd left Reid, Mr Lavrentiadis sat down with the phone book to find his old teacher.

Nick Lavrentiadis, with friends Gabriel and Elizabeth Pallas, who also spent time in Reid, and Eric McCrum. ( Supplied: Eric McCrum )

"He was a terrific teacher, and a terrific person. He had the respect of our parents and all us kids loved him," he said.

In 2004, Mr Lavrentiadis organised a reunion with Mr McCrum and the other Greek students from Reid in Adelaide.

Memories were resurrected, like the time the kids jumped on their desks, terrified by a bobtail lizard Mr McCrum brought into the classroom.

Mr McCrum would remember the year as a time that cemented his passion as a naturalist and his belief in the benefits of educating children about nature.

A dust storm rolls into Reid. ( Supplied: Eric McCrum )

Now old age has blurred the student-teacher dynamic, but Mr Lavrentiadis admits that he can still only refer to his one-time teacher as Mr McCrum, never as Eric.

Neither men have been back to Reid. Mr Lavrentiadis's brother passed through on the Indian Pacific train and said there was not even a sign saying 'Reid'.

But Mr Lavrentiadis would like to take a look himself.

"I'd ask the railways if they can stop where Reid was for five minutes so I could walk out and refresh my memories, go back a few years."