Pardoo 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 Pastoral farming, graziers for the purpose of livestock grazing on rangelands. Austral ...

, formerly 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 ...

, and now 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 ...

approximately east of

Port Hedland A port is a maritime law, maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge Affreightment, cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inla ...

and north of Marble Bar, in the

Pilbara The Pilbara () is a large, dry, sparsely populated regions of Western Australia, region in the north of Western Australia. It is known for its Indigenous Australians, Aboriginal people; wealth disparity; its ancient landscapes; the prevailing r ...

region of

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

Description

The property used to be about in size. It is on the western end of the

Great Sandy Desert The Great Sandy Desert is an interim Australian bioregion,IBRA Version 6.1
data

where it meets the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...

at the southern end of the

Eighty Mile Beach Eighty Mile Beach also spelled Eighty-mile Beach or 80-mile Beach, and formerly called 90-mile Beach, lies along the north-west coast of Western Australia about half-way between the towns of Broome and Port Hedland. Despite its name, it is so ...

. Mount Goldsworthy, located on the south western side of the lease, is the site of the first

iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the f ...

mine in the

. The Pardoo iron ore mine is located in the region, and shares the station's name. The station was sold in late 2014 by the Rogers family to a

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

an-based investor, Bruce Cheung, for 13.5 million. Cheung's company, the Pardoo Beef Corporation, appointed Eric Golangco as the general manager. At this time the property was running 5,700 head of cattle on . Centre-pivot irrigation is being used to produce extra hay for stock. The property also has of ocean frontage and has a 145-bay caravan park tourist operation.

History

Mr S. Anderson was the proprietor of the station in 1892. Heavy rains in April of that year led to heavy stock losses with around 100 cattle, 1,500 sheep and 30 horses being lost in the deluge. In May of the same year he was thrown from his

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 mi ...

and sustained severe injuries, which resulted in him being taken to Roebourne for hospitalisation. Seven

Aboriginal Australians Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Mainland Australia, Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. Humans first migrated to Australia (co ...

were caught killing and stealing sheep from the station in 1893. They were sentenced to four years

hard labour Penal labour is a term for various kinds of forced labour that prisoners are required to perform, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence involving penal labour have included inv ...

and eighteen lashes with the

cat o' nine tails The cat o' nine tails, commonly shortened to the cat, is a type of multi-tailed whip or flail. It originated as an implement for physical punishment, particularly in the Royal Navy and British Army, and as a judicial punishment in Britain and ...

. In 1913 the station had an estimated flock of 20,000 sheep, which were to be shorn using the 12 stands in the

shearing shed Shearing sheds (or wool sheds) are large sheds located on sheep stations to accommodate large scale sheep shearing activities. In countries where large numbers of sheep are kept for wool, sometimes many thousands in a flock, shearing sheds a ...

in July of that year. The area was flooded following heavy rains in 1929. Frank Snellgrove Thompson owned the station from at least 1929 until his death in 1937. His son, Frank Finlayson Thompson, took over control of the property until at least 1951, in addition to the family

merino The Merino is a list of sheep breeds, breed or group of breeds of domestic sheep, characterised by very fine soft wool. It was established in Spain near the end of the Middle Ages, and was for several centuries kept as a strict Spanish monop ...

stud property ''Nardlah'' near Broomehill in the Great Southern region of the state. In 1951 a seventy-year-old man, Hans Pederson, fell from a

windmill A windmill is a machine operated by the force of wind acting on vanes or sails to mill grain (gristmills), pump water, generate electricity, or drive other machinery. Windmills were used throughout the high medieval and early modern period ...

tower. The

Royal Flying Doctor Service The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), commonly known as the Flying Doctor, is an aeromedical retrieval service in Australia and the largest of its kind in the world. It is a non-profit organisation that provides urgent and emergency medica ...

sent a plane from

but it arrived too late and Pederson had died. Pardoo was an outcamp of De Grey Station but became a separate entity owned by the Thompson family until 1963 when Frank Thompson sold it to Leslie (Les) Schubert. Schubert describes the history of the station in his book ''Wiping Out the Tracks – The Northern Odyssey''. In November 1965 Schubert swapped Pardoo along with a cash adjustment of $120,000 for Louisa Downs and Bohemia Downs stations in the

Kimberley Kimberly or Kimberley may refer to: Places and historical events Australia Queensland * Kimberley, Queensland, a coastal locality in the Shire of Douglas South Australia * County of Kimberley, a cadastral unit in South Australia Ta ...

region. Karl Stein took over the station in January 1966. Sometime before 1977 Karl Stein retired and sold Pardoo to Russel Peake. The Leeds family purchased Pardoo from Peake and then sold the lease for Pardoo to Graeme and Judith Rogers. Pardoo is operating under the Crown Lease numbers CL694-1967 and CL194-1983 and has the associated Land Act numbers LA3114/446 and LA398/718. The station is estimated to have a size of and in 2012 was stocked with approximately 7,000

Santa Gertrudis cattle The Santa Gertrudis is an American list of cattle breeds, breed of beef cattle. It is a taurine-indicine hybrid breed, descended from both zebu and European cattle. It was bred in the early twentieth century in Texas, and received official recog ...

Tropical cyclones

In 2012 the station lay directly in the path of Cyclone Lua and most staff were evacuated to Port Hedland to wait the storm out. The Anderson family and two station hands remained at the property. The area was hit by winds and heavy rain, with many trees uprooted; the roadhouse owner, Janet Robb, described the property as looking like "an absolute warzone". Pardoo also took the brunt of

Cyclone Rusty Severe Tropical Cyclone Rusty was a strong, slow-moving tropical cyclone that produced record duration Gale, gale-force winds in Port Hedland, Western Australia in late February 2013. Originating as an Low-pressure area, area of low press ...

in February 2013, recording of rain in 24 hours along with strong winds. Stock was killed from

hypothermia Hypothermia is defined as a body core temperature below in humans. Symptoms depend on the temperature. In mild hypothermia, there is shivering and mental confusion. In moderate hypothermia, shivering stops and confusion increases. In severe ...

and the homestead was damaged by the category four cyclone. Ten years later in April 2023 Cyclone Ilsa passed directly over Pardoo as a Category 5 storm, causing over $4 million of damage to the nearby roadhouse, tearing roofs off buildings and overturning road trucks. Pardoo's new manager Scott Fraser had been there three weeks when Ilsa hit. Pardoo had 20 centre-pivot irrigation plants, used to grass feed the mainly

Wagyu Wagyu (, Hepburn romanization, Hepburn: ''wagyū'', ) is the collective name for the four principal List of Japanese cattle breeds, Japanese breeds of beef cattle. All wagyū cattle originate from early twentieth-century cross-breeding between ...

cattle. These were tied down ahead of the cyclone, but all but one was destroyed. Additionally, many station sheds and other buildings were destroyed. The financial loss was estimated at $25m.Cyclone Ilsa clean-up continues on billion-dollar Pardoo Station after 'mind-boggling' damage
Michelle Stanley,

ABC News Online ABC News, also known as ABC News and Current Affairs, is a public news service produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The service covers both local and world affairs, broadcasting both nationally as ABC News, and across the Asia- ...

, 2023-06-15

Description

History

Tropical cyclones

Climate

References

Further reading