Boolathana Station 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 ...

currently operating 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 ...

that once operated as a

sheep station A sheep station is a large property ( station, the equivalent of a ranch) in Australia or New Zealand, whose main activity is the raising of sheep for their wool and/or meat. In Australia, sheep stations are usually in the south-east or sout ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

Description

The property is situated approximately north of Carnarvon and south of Coral Bay in the

Gascoyne The Gascoyne region is one of the nine administrative regions of Western Australia. It is located in the northwest of Western Australia, and consists of the local government areas of Carnarvon, Exmouth, Shark Bay and Upper Gascoyne. The Gasc ...

region. The property is bounded by

Quobba Quobba Station, most commonly referred to as Quobba, is a pastoral lease that operates as a sheep station in Western Australia. It was originally owned by Charles Augustus Fane and Charles Eugene Fane, who named it Point Charles. Description ...

station to the west and the north. The homestead is situated on the banks of a large dam about long and wide. The country is mostly of a coastal nature with alternating sand ridges and salt bush flats. Several different native grasses, shrubs and the wattle variety ''Wanu'' provide good feed for stock. The station was one of the first in the district to bore for

artesian water An artesian aquifer is a confined aquifer containing groundwater under positive pressure. An artesian aquifer has trapped water, surrounded by layers of impermeable rock or clay, which apply positive pressure to the water contained within t ...

; one bore provides of water per day.

History

The first Europeans to visit the area were an expedition led by Charles Brockman and George Hamersley in 1876. Brockman later established Boolanthana after acquiring the lease for . In 1915, the drover Alf Cream took 2350 sheep from Boolathana and drove them overland for nine weeks to

Meeberrie Meeberrie is a homestead and station name in the Murchison district of Western Australia. The station is situated approximately north of Mullewa. The Butcher family were the first leaseholders of the station and arrived from Victoria in 187 ...

, another station owned by Butcher. The journey should have taken five weeks but the country was waterlogged following twenty consecutive days of heavy rain. The

Wooramel River The Wooramel River is an ephemeral river in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. The river rises near McLeod Pyramid and flows in a westerly direction, joined by six tributaries including the Wooramel River North, Bilung Creek, One Gum Cr ...

had risen and the drovers had to wait nine days to cross. The property was sold in 1928 by James and Charles Butcher to Messrs Chenery and McIntyre for £130,000. By this stage Boolathana occupied an area of , was well watered by bores that provided over of water per day, and carried a flock of over 40,000 sheep. In 1949 the property was owned by Harry Butcher, who was no relation to the previous owners; he acquired the property in 1947, about the same time that the area was struck by

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 ...

for a three-year period until good rainfalls were recorded in the winter of 1951. The property was a

bird sanctuary An animal sanctuary is a facility where animals are brought to live and to be protected for the rest of their lives. Pattrice Jones, co-founder of VINE Sanctuary defines an animal sanctuary as "a safe-enough place or relationship within the cont ...

by 1949 with large numbers of

cockatoo A cockatoo is any of the 21 parrot species belonging to the family Cacatuidae, the only family in the superfamily Cacatuoidea. Along with the Psittacoidea (true parrots) and the Strigopoidea (large New Zealand parrots), they make up the ord ...

s living around the homestead. The 1949 shearing season was reasonably good with 25,000 sheep shorn. The record over the previous 30 years had been 50,000 with an average of about 20,000 per year. In 2012 the area was menaced by bushfires that burned an area of in total. Boolathana and other stations such as Jimba Jimba, Doorawarrah and Meedo all received bushfire advice warnings. In 2015 the station owners had to renegotiate the lease agreement with the state government, including having the government excise sections of pastoral land along the world-heritage listed

Ningaloo Coast The Ningaloo Coast is a World Heritage Site located in the north west coastal region of Western Australia. The heritage-listed area is located approximately north of Perth, along the East Indian Ocean. The distinctive Ningaloo Reef that fring ...

from the property, for conservation and tourism ventures.

References

{{Stations of the Gascoyne Western Australia Pastoral leases in Western Australia Stations (Australian agriculture) Shire of Carnarvon

Description

History

See also

References