Cattle stations

Home, home on the cattle station.

When reading up on the Kimberleys you come across words like drover, home stay and cattle stations. Images that come to mind might be a big ranch surrounded by fences that hold herds of horses and cattle. On the Kimberley maps you see large sections identified as cattle stations. Some are private and others welcome campers and some even provide very comfortable accommodation. All of these are working stations.

Oi, there ain't enough room for the three of us.

None of these places are less than 500,000 acres. In fact, that’s considered small. The vast amount of land accommodates cattle’s solitary nature so you’ll never see more than five cows together in a group. And that would be rare since on average there’s enough land for one to two cows per acre. So if you ever buy Australian beef, at least you know that beef from WA is going to be a very high quality meat.

Unfortunately, cattle do great damage to the Kimberley’s ecosystem. They are not indigenous to the area and through grazing eat all of the palatable plants, few which grow back and instead are replaced by weeds which then lead to infestation. Grazing and the roaming around have also led to soil erosion, creating a barren and void landscape typical to what you would imagine of the outback. Not to worry, cane toads are making their way into the region so although cattle may be solitary by nature, they won’t be along for long.