Binerah Downs

Binerah Downs station was the Angells family property in NSW on the Queensland border. Originally part of the Sir Sidney Kidman owned Olive Downs Pastoral Company, the lease of 126,300 acres was taken up by our Grandfather, William and his brother John sometime around 1928/29. It remained in the family under the ownership of our father Allan Angell until it was sold to the NSW Government to form part of the Sturt National Park in 1976.

Location
Binerah Downs was a Sheep Station in northwest New South Wales situated about 710km north-northeast of Adelaide. Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, is about 1060km east-southeast of Binerah Downs. Binerah Downs is at an elevation of approximately 156m above sea level. Binerah Downs was one of the northern most homesteads in New South Wales. The nearest ocean is the Southern Ocean about 520km southwest of Binerah Downs.

With an annual rainfall of around 200mm, drought was common place as was the heat of summer and associated duststorms. The topography of the country is made up of the gibbers of the Sturt Stony Desert to the East and the rolling red sandhills of the Strezlecki Desert to the West. Natural vegetation on the property was Saltbush, Mulga and Spinifex.

The western boundary of the property included Fort Grey Lake which more often than not was devoid of water. The lake was also the home of Sturts Explorer Tree. As you travelled east you moved over the rolling sandhills where the vegetation consisted mainly of Mulga trees and saltbush, into the gibber plains where the homestead was built. A few kilometres further east you came across the range where McDonalds Peak was the major landmark. Beyond the ranges was the eastern boundary with Olive Downs station and here you could be over awed with the Jump-Up mesa which rises 150 metres above the surrounding plains. 
 

Binerah Downs was bounded to the north by a portion of the world's longest fence, the Great Dingo Fence. It is one of the longest structures on the planet, and the world's longest fence. It would eventually stretch 5,320 km (3,306 mi) from Jimbour on the Darling Downs near Dalby through thousands of miles of arid country to the Eyre peninsula on the Great Australian Bight. Originally constructed during the 1880s and finished in 1885, to keep dingoes out of the relatively fertile south-east part of the continent (where they had largely been exterminated) and protect the sheep flocks of southern Queensland.
 

History
Binerah Downs was primarily a sheep grazing property and Fine Wool Merino sheep were grazed on the station.
With such dry conditions, the carrying capacity during good seasons was around 1 head per 25 acres giving the property a carrying capacity of around 5000 head of sheep. During drought that would become anything from 1 to 50 plus depending on the severity of the drought at the time.
Top wool prices in the late 1950's were around the 3/- (3 shillings) per pound, or in today's money, around 60c a kilo. This is in comparison to todays average market value of 830 cents per kilo for AAA clean wool.

A small number of cattle were also grazed on the property and a group of milking cows were kept to supply milk for the family and workers.

As with all remote properties, the land holders needed to be self sufficient and this meant keeping chooks for both egg supply and eating. Pig's for meat. Sometime's goats for milk etc and they had to be innovative in creating a vegetable patch that could survive the harsh conditions. Water for the vegetable patch on Binerah Downs was the waste water from the bathroom and laundry.

Newspapers, mail and groceries were delivered by truck once a week from Broken Hill. Fuel supplies were also trucked in, in 44 gallon drums (200L), when required.

Over the years quite a few people worked on Binerah Downs in various roles and the stockmen employed were predominantly Aboriginal with the Overseers and Managers being European Australians. At the time of the sale of the property to the NSW NPWS, the manager was Arnold DeGoumois. Arnold was the longest serving station manager and held the position for more than 15 years and as a result, his own family who also grew up on the property considered Binerah Downs to be their home. 

All seven members of my generation lived on Binerah Downs until we moved to Broken Hill in 1958. 
 

Station Vehicles

To run and maintain a pastoral lease you needed vehicles for different applications. You could not simply make a phone call to get a contractor to do the job as phone services were non existant in those days.

Binerah Downs had the following vehicles to run the property during the 50's and 60's and as with most outback properties, these vehicles ended their working lives on the station dump. (See Anthony Horden's below) The first that comes to mind was the International 26 foot flat bed truck that was used in many roles such as carting sheep, horses and cattle by having stock crates fitted to it and during times of drought it had a 500 gallon water tank fitted in order to cart water for the homestead use. It was also used for carting hay for stock feed when required.

We had two tractors. The first being a top of the line caterpillar D2 which was used primarily for tank sinking and which Allan Angell used to use to do tank sinking on surrounding properties as well as on Binerah Downs. The second was a Massey Ferguson tractor which because it had a PTO attached, was used for post hole digging and fencing. Both tractors were also used from time to time to grade or regrade roads on the property.

The next fleet of vehicles included a World War II Willy's Army Jeep. A Landrover and when Nissan release their first Patrol, our father bought one of these and I still remember to this day just how comfortable and modern it looked compared to the Jeep and Landy.

Then of course was the town vehicle. This was the family car that was used for trips to place's such as Tibooburra and Broken Hill. My first recollection of the family car was a Peugot which was followed by a Volkswagen Kombie van. It was the Kombie that we owned when we first moved to Broken Hill. The Kombie was replaced by a Zephyr and in turn by a Falcon station wagon.

The first motor bike that was used on the property was during the management by Arnold DeGoumois when he was given permission to purchase a motor bike for station use. At the time, there was no such thing as an Agricultural bike so he bought the top of the range Honda CB400 which was an extremely heavy bike and as it turned out, rather useless in the sand dune country around the property. As a working bike, it became more of a "fun" bike than anything else so at the end of the day, it did not go to waste.

Mods and Cons

Being in the remote outback such thing as electricity had to be supplied by generator if you were lucky enough to even own one. Binerah Downs had a large diesel generator setup in the shed you see in the foreground of the photo at the top of this page. It was used to generate power to a bank of glass battery which supplied 32 volts of electricity to power the lights in the homestead.

Refridgeration was by way of a Kerosene powered fridge and the stove was a wood burning combustion stove. Hot water was supplied by running the water pipes through the stove to heat the water.

Drinking water was only available from the rainwater tanks which were only topped up when it rained.

We had a radio for listening to the news and broadcast radio programs and when such things as the weather reports or news came on, you had to be quiet in order not to miss the reports.

We also had a two way communication radio which was battery powered and was the successor of the pedal radio. The radio call sign was 8ku Binerah Downs. (You now know why the header banner reads 8ku Binerah Downs.) In the afternoons, the women of the outback would get on the radio for a gossip session. These sessions became known as "Galah Sessions".

Anthony Horden's

Anthony Horden's was a large department store established in Sydney in 1823. They originally had a large mail order business and advertised that you could buy anything "from a needle to an anchor". It was the name given to the station dump for obvious reasons as you could find just about anything you needed at the dump because nothing was truly wasted, rather it was simply relocated to the dump in case it was needed later. Many of the old and tired station vehicles were retired to Anthony Horden's where they remained rusting away until they could maybe supply "spare parts" to an operational vehicle that had broken down, then they were stripped for the required part which sometimes had to be modified to do the job at hand.

Sturts Tree

Sturts Tree is located on the Binerah Downs side of the boundary fence that run's through Fort Grey Lake. Captain Charles Sturt and a small contingent of his expedition camped at Fort Grey Lake in 1845 during their exploration in search of an "inland sea"