Alton Downs Station, most commonly known simply as Alton Downs, is a

pastoral lease A pastoral lease, sometimes called a pastoral run, is an arrangement used in both Australia and New Zealand where government-owned Crown land is leased out to graziers for the purpose of livestock grazing on rangelands. Australia Pastoral lease ...

that operates as a

cattle station In Australia and New Zealand, a cattle station is a large farm ( station is equivalent to the American ranch), the main activity of which is the rearing of cattle. The owner of a cattle station is called a '' grazier''. The largest cattle stati ...

in north east

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

. The property is situated approximately south west of

Birdsville Birdsville is a rural town and locality in the Shire of Diamantina, Queensland, Australia. In the the locality of Birdsville had a population of 110 people. It is a popular tourist destination with many people using it as a starting point acro ...

and north west of Innamincka. It is bordered to the west by the

Simpson Desert The Simpson Desert is a large area of dry, red sandy plain and dunes in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland in central Australia. It is the fourth-largest Deserts of Australia, Australian desert, with an area of . The desert ...

Regional reserve, to the south by

Clifton Hills Station Clifton Hills Station is a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station in the far north of South Australia. Description It is situated approximately south of Birdsville and north west of Innamincka. The property encompasses part of th ...

and to the east by

Pandie Pandie Station Pandie Pandie Station, most commonly known as Pandie Pandie, also often spelled as Pandi Pandi or Pandy Pandy, is a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station in north east South Australia. It lies on the eastern edge of Karanguru territ ...

. The station contains many landforms including

gibber plain A desert pavement, also called reg (in the western Sahara), serir (eastern Sahara), gibber (in Australia), or saï (central Asia) is a desert surface covered with closely packed, interlocking angular or rounded rock fragments of pebble and cobbl ...

s, sand-plains, floodplains, channels and

ephemeral Ephemerality (from the Greek word , meaning 'lasting only one day') is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Academically, the term ephemeral constitutionally describes a diverse assortment of things and experiences, fr ...

rivers. The

Warburton River The Warburton River (or Warburton Creek) is a freshwater stream in the far north of South Australia that flows in a south westerly direction and discharges into the eastern side of Lake Eyre. It is one of the state's largest rivers, and is part ...

flows through the property southward through Clifton Hills and

Cowarie Station Cowarie Station most commonly known as Cowarie is a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station in north east South Australia. The property is located north of Marree and south west of Birdsville. The Diamantina River merges with the M ...

then discharging into

Lake Eyre Lake Eyre ( ), officially known as Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, is an endorheic lake in east-central Far North South Australia, some north of Adelaide. The shallow lake is the depocentre of the vast endorheic Lake Eyre basin, and contains the ...

History

The property was first taken up by Whittingham in 1878, the same year that Chapman established

Cordillo Downs Cordillo Downs or Cordillo Downs Station is both a pastoral lease currently operating as a cattle station and a formal bounded locality in South Australia. It is located about north of Innamincka and south east of Birdsville. The name and bo ...

Station. Whittington still owned the property in 1893 but was experiencing financial difficulties with the

Bank of Adelaide The Bank of Adelaide was founded in 1865 in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. It was incorporated by an act of the Parliament of South Australia. The original directors of the company were Henry Ayers, Thomas Greaves Waterhouse, Robert B ...

, of which he was a director.

Sidney Kidman Sir Sidney Kidman (9 May 18572 September 1935), known as Sid Kidman and popularly named "the Cattle King", was an Australian pastoral farming, pastoralist and entrepreneur who owned or co-owned large areas of land in Australia in his lifetime. ...

acquired the property in 1897 after he had bought nearby

and about the same time he started to expand further into the

Channel Country The Channel Country is a region of outback Australia mostly in the state of Queensland but also in parts of South Australia, Northern Territory and New South Wales. The name comes from the numerous intertwined rivulets that cross the region ...

and purchased

Annandale Station Annandale Station most commonly known as Annandale is a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station in central west Queensland. It is located on the tribal lands of the Wongkamala. The property is located west Birdsville and south of ...

. The station was abandoned sometime early in the 1900s when the area was

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

struck. Other nearby properties including Pandie Pandie, Miranda and Idra Downs had also been abandoned. The country had started to recover from the drought in 1904 and pastoralists in the area had commenced restocking. The property was found to be practically abandoned in 1927 after the area had been over run by

rabbit Rabbits, also known as bunnies or bunny rabbits, are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also contains the hares) of the order Lagomorpha (which also contains the pikas). ''Oryctolagus cuniculus'' includes the European rabbit speci ...

Current use

The property is currently owned by Brook Proprietors, who also own nearby

, Murnpeowie, Adria Downs (Queensland) and Kamaran Downs (Queensland) stations. All these holdings are NASAA Certified Organic Livestock operations. The land occupying the extent of the Alton Downs pastoral lease was gazetted as a locality in April 2013 under the name 'Alton Downs Station' with the word 'Station' being added to avoid duplication of the name of a locality in

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

References

{{Stations of Sidney Kidman Stations (Australian agriculture) Pastoral leases in South Australia Far North (South Australia) 1878 establishments in Australia

History

Current use

See also

References