Cattle Station (near Nelia) 1 – 7 August 2014

Set off in the morning for the cattle station, which is north of Nelia on a on a windy dirt road. While Nelia is the ‘big smoke’ around here, it only has about 8 people and a closed post office. The Station is about 40,000 acres and is part of a string of properties owned by the one family – around 360,000 acres. While this is enormous by coastal standards, you need this size to make it viable. Normally this property has over 3,000 head of cattle, but because of the drought they have been shipping out most of the cattle. We arrived at the property to help out as part of the Blaze Aid volunteer program. The family is very warm and welcoming and there was plenty of work to do. Unfortunately Peter got sick straight away and was out of action for a few days. However we were able to do some jobs for them. It was very peaceful on the property and we got a better insight into the issues that face people on isolated outback stations, especially during a drought. We had a tour of the property and saw the drovers mustering cattle into yards for extra feed – very hot and dusty! There is so little feed in the paddocks that the cattle need additional feed to survive as most paddocks have only Mitchell or Flinders Grasses, interspersed with prickly shrubs. There are no dams on the property and they get all their water from bores drilled into the Great Artisan Basin.