Brickhouse Station, formerly spelt Brick House Station, is a pastoral lease in

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 ...

. It 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 ...

but now 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 stat ...

, with some turned over to mango cultivation . It is located north east 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. It occupies an area of with of

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...

frontage. The

Gascoyne River The Gascoyne River is a river in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. At , it is the longest river in Western Australia. Description The Gascoyne River comprises three branches in its upper reaches. Draining the Collier Range, the river ...

runs through the property for of its length and it is bounded to the east by Doorawarrah Station. In 1888 the property was owned by Forrest, Burt and Co., who were sending consignments of sheep, including one of 2,040 sheep, to Frederick Piesse in Williams. A heat-wave during January 1896 produced temperatures as high as in the shade, with hundreds of birds dying. No rain fell at the property between August 1896 and May 1897, and only fell over the preceding 22-month period. By 1898 the station was being stocked up, taking delivery of 10,000 sheep from Mundabullangana station. The first bores were sunk at the property in 1905. One bore recorded a flow of per hour when sunk to a depth of . It was later sunk down to to obtain flows of per hour, which Burt found disappointing and insufficient for him to open up thousands of extra acres of land for stock. A shearer named Lonton was murdered at Brick House in 1906 when another shearer named Fleming shot him in the chest in a

drunk Alcohol intoxication, also known as alcohol poisoning, commonly described as drunkenness or inebriation, is the negative behavior and physical effects caused by a recent consumption of alcohol. In addition to the toxicity of ethanol, the main ...

en argument. Fleming committed suicide a few hours afterwards. During shearing later in October 189 bales of wool were produced from the 10,565 sheep sheared. Following the death of

Septimus Burt The Hon Septimus Burt KC (25 October 1847 – 15 May 1919) was a Western Australian lawyer, politician and grazier, the son of Sir Archibald Burt. He was born on 25 October 1847 at St Kitts in the West Indies, and educated at a private school ...

in 1919 the property was left to one of his four surviving sons, Reginald Edward Burt. Reginald had worked at Brick House from 1901 to 1903 as a station hand and became the manager in 1904, a position he held until 1922. He remained a co-owner of the station until his own death in 1957. Massive

bushfires A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identif ...

swept through the area in 1927 with Brick House, Doorawarrah, Ella Valla, Callagiddy and other properties all losing large areas of feed to the fires. Tragedy occurred at the station in 1971 when a light plane crashed during mustering, killing the two men flying. The property has been flooded several times; severe flooding occurred in 1961 and in the flood of 2000 the water rose high enough to enter the kitchen by about . During the 2010 flood, water entered many of the outbuildings and the Burt family expected to lose about a quarter of the 5,000 head of cattle depastured on the property. The station was owned or co-owned by the Burt family since the 1880s, but was put up for sale in 2013. The property was acquired by

Andrew Forrest John Andrew Henry Forrest (born 18 November 1961), nicknamed Twiggy, is an Australian businessman. He is best known as the former CEO (and current non-executive chairman) of Fortescue Metals Group (FMG), and has other interests in the mining i ...

in 2015 along with

Minilya Station Minilya Station, most often referred to as Minilya, is a pastoral lease currently operating as a cattle station that once operated as a sheep station in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. The property is situated approximately south of ...

for an estimated 10 million, and is now spelt Brickhouse Station. In 2017 Forrest obtained approval to put under irrigation to grow mangoes.

References

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

See also

References