Host: Barrygowan Station Written by Samantha Thompson, Family friend. I live in London, as far removed from the Queensland countryside as you can get but my ties to the “bush” are strong as some of my closest friends live and work in rural communities. As a child of immigrants, many a school holiday was spent squashed […]
Host: Barrygowan Station Written by Tannas Godfrey, co-manager. I want to start this article by saying that I will put up my hand and say that I am not a person with a natural sense of direction. When I went away to the Royal Military College in Duntroon, it became apparent very early on I […]
Host: Barrygowan Station Written by Tannas Godfrey, co-manager. As I mentioned in our introduction my husband Hugh and I run Barrygowan as part of the family business, Tinnenburra Pastoral Company. I thought I would talk about what has been involved since my husband’s family came to own it, we followed a few years after Geoff […]
Host: Barrygowan Station Written by Geoff Arthur, previous owner. The year 1950 was the beginning of a golden 20 years for sheep industry in Australia – and Barrygowan was in a prime position to take advantage of that. Season-wise, 1950 to 1956 were bumper years which coincided with the wool boom generated by the Korean […]
Host: Barrygowan Station Written by Barry ‘Blade’ Johnstone (long-time friend) and Tannas Godfrey, co-manager. Late last year I penned an article for Central Station as part of the Isolated Parents and Children’s Association (ICPA) host week. As a result, the lovely editor of Central Station, Ms Steph Coombes got in touch and invited ‘Barrygowan’ Station […]
Host: Wooleen Station Written by David Pollock, co-manager. Until 2006 Wooleen was predominately a sheep station, but we always had a couple of hundred cattle. For 100 years everyone adamantly maintained that this was well and truly ‘sheep country’, until the price of wool plummeted, and later on the dingoes came back. Now almost everybody […]
Host: Wooleen Station Written by Frances Pollock, co-manager. You may have read in an earlier post how Wooleen found its way into the tourism industry, but I’ll quickly refresh your memory. My father-in-law purchased the property in 1989, moved the family in 1990 and then watched wool crash in 1991. With no diversification already established […]
Host: Wooleen Station Written by David Pollock, co-manager. We don’t kill dingos on Wooleen. It’s not a popular management strategy amongst an almost entirely pastoral community, many of whom have only recently (in the last 20 years) changed from sheep to cattle. We only made that change in 2006. Some in the south of the […]
Host: Wooleen Station Written by David Pollock, co-manager. The Wooleen pastoral lease was taken up in 1886 by the Sharpe family, who owned the lease for 99 years and 6 months. My father Brett Pollock first visited Wooleen in 1954, and he became a jackaroo there in the early seventies. He tried to buy Wooleen […]
Host: Wooleen Station Written by Frances Pollock. Friends and family in the east often ask me, ‘If I flew into Broome, how long would it take me to get there?’ I politely suggest they should fly into Perth instead. ‘But you’re right out in the outback, yeh?’ Wooleen Station is roughly 375,000 acres and is […]
Host: Kilcowera Station Written by Toni Sherwin, Station Owner Kilcowera Station offers accommodation, camping and tours. Learn more here. Happy cow in the grass. Kilcowera and Zenonie Stations are relatively small compared to the vastness of the properties in northern Australia. They are situated in a fairly arid landscape in the south west of Queensland. I […]
Host: Kilcowera StationWritten by Toni Sherwin, Station OwnerKilcowera Station offers accommodation, camping and tours. Learn more here. Volunteers for Isolated Students Education is a great organisation, now being administered by Aussie Helpers, they send retired teachers or helpers out to properties where help is needed during busy or stressful times. If you are shorthanded at […]
Host: Kilcowera StationWritten by Toni Sherwin, Station OwnerKilcowera Station offers accommodation, camping and tours. Learn more here. Track to Graysons’ Bore in Graysons’ Paddock. As you are driving through the outback did you ever think that all that country you are driving through has a name? It has its uses, its very own history, and […]
Host: Kilcowera StationWritten by Toni Sherwin, Station OwnerKilcowera Station offers accommodation, camping and tours. Learn more here. In the early 1940’s a horrific murder was carried out on Kilcowera, the murderer, James Callaghan was caught and sentenced to life imprisonment. This fascinating case was the first one in Australia where a conviction was made solely […]
Host: Dampier Downs Station Written by Anne Marie Huey – co-Manager, Dampier Downs. Find part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here. Northern Australia is a big, empty place. Or at least it seems that way at first glance. Spend some time in the outback, though, and you will discover a tight-knit network of […]
Host: Dampier Downs Station Written by Anne Marie Huey – co-Manager, Dampier Downs. Find part 1 here and part 2 here. Live export underpins the economic viability of the northern beef industry. The beef industry in turn contributes significantly to the economic prosperity of northern Australia. There are few other industries (mining and gas extraction […]
Host: Dampier Downs Station Written by Anne Marie Huey – co-Manager, Dampier Downs. Find part 1 here. Live export is the mainstay of the northern beef industry. For most of its history, live export barely registered on the radar of many Australians. That all changed in 2011 when footage of abhorrent animal cruelty was aired […]
Host: Dampier Downs Station Written by Anne Marie Huey – co-Manager, Dampier Downs. This year has been a year of extremes. We started with an unprecedented amount of rain and the largest flooding we have ever seen. While rain is always a good thing, it was devastating to see our brand-new paddocks wash away in […]
Host: Dampier Downs Station Written by Anne Marie Huey – co-Manager, Dampier Downs. Mother Nature is a fickle mistress. At times she can be kind and benevolent, bestowing gentle seasons that fill rivers and water holes and result in a lush carpeting of grass across the landscape. Other years she can be heartbreakingly cruel withholding life-giving […]
Host: Yougawalla Pastoral Co. Written by Maartje Heiblom – Governess “Hi there! Wait a second.” Robert pulls his arm out of the cow that is standing calmly in the cattle stand and waves a slimy, red-white string under my nose. “Look, a Fallopian tube!” I smile, this dose of outback Aussie straight-forwardness doesn’t surprise me anymore. […]
