Location: Channel Country, South West Queensland
Monkira is located on the Diamantina River and is the North Australian Pastoral Company’s most southern property in the Channel Country. It is dominated by the mighty flood plains of the Diamantina River, which can produce highly productive pastures of blue bush and native sorghum.
Anthony, Deb and their family have lived at Monkira since 2002. Anthony grew up in the bush, having previously worked in the Channel Country before managing a large station in the Northern Territory. Monkira employs approximately eight staff and is run as a grower property for weaner steers. After growing out on Monkira, cattle are sent to backgrounding properties or direct to the Wainui Feedlot.
Monkira is famous for turning off a shorthorn bullock in the 1890’s which weighed 1381 kg, known as the Monkira Ox.
Anthony, Deb, Abby, Ty & Savana Desreaux

Episode 61. Tylah Bonisch – Her first year as Head Stockwoman
Since she was knee-high to a grasshopper, Tylah Bonisch knew she wanted to work with cattle and horses. She didn’t travel to the north for a gap year, but to start her career in the pastoral industry. In this episode Tylah and I speak about her time in the industry so far, and how she […]
Flying Shy
Most stations have a plane or a helicopter, and at some point you’re going to get offered a flight. Here’s how to totally ruin your chances of ever having a second go. 6am and we’re just pulling up to the airstrip – a wide gravel road a short way from the homestead. Inside the old […]

Episode 60. Jess Di Pasquale – Equine adventures in Australia and abroad
Jess Di Pasquale is a born and bred Territory girl. Even though her childhood was colored with living on and visiting cattle stations, she went on the excel in the English equine discipline of Mounted Games, competing overseas 3 times while Representing Australia. In this episode, Jess shares her latests plans to compete in the […]

Episode 58. Danyelle Haigh – Don’t judge this book by its cover
Let’s be honest, we love to judge. It’s second nature to take someone at face value and make assumptions about them. In social science, this phenomenon is called schema are mental structures that an individual uses to organize knowledge and guide cognitive processes and behaviour. So what that means, is that we use Schema to categorize objects and […]

From brats to bovines
Written by Sarah Johnson It started off as a distant dream back when I was in high school. You know.. the good old year 10 subject “careers”, when it’s that dreaded time where you’re almost an adult and have to start making career choices. Everyone else was expressing that they wanted to become lawyers, engineers, […]

Episode 57. Luke Hayes – Venturing off the pastoral pathway
Luke Hayes was born a 6th generation pastoralist on Deep Well Station in Central Australia. You’d be forgiven if you assumed that Luke was planning to continue in the same line of work as the previous 5 generations of his family – it just makes sense, right? However, that is not Luke’s story. As a […]