Qualla: Arubiddy Station

Arubiddy Station: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Three thousand square kilometres of saltbush and limestone, and at the centre of it a brick homestead with three bedrooms and a couple of cottages for the people who keep the whole thing running. That is Arubiddy Station, a working sheep run flung out across the Nullarbor Plain so far from anywhere that the nearest town of consequence, Norseman, lies 394 kilometres to the west. Out here the scale of the land bends ordinary words. A neighbour is a day's drive. A paddock can be larger than a city. And the day itself starts at a time the rest of the state does not keep.

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Arubiddy Station: Water From the Deep

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the Nullarbor there are no rivers, so everything depends on what can be pulled from underground. Arubiddy is watered by twelve bores feeding 127 kilometres of piping that snakes across the property to keep stock alive in country that can carry up to 21,000 sheep. The plain its...

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Arubiddy Station: The Brown Family Years

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Arubiddy was established in 1961, one of a cluster of Nullarbor stations carved out in that era. The Brown family took over in the 1970s and spent decades improving the run. They were also quietly experimental. In 2003 they ran a field trial baling hay from a native grass, the ha...

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Arubiddy Station: A Hard Asset to Sell

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A station this isolated is not an easy thing to sell. In 2009 Arubiddy went to auction together with a flock of 17,000 sheep, and at A$2.8 million it was passed in, failing to meet its reserve, and lingered on the market afterward. Ownership eventually changed hands all the same....

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Arubiddy Station: Living on Eucla Time

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Then there is the matter of the clock. Lewis told ABC Great Southern that Arubiddy runs on UTC+09:00, an hour and a quarter ahead of Perth, and even out of step with the unofficial "Eucla Time" of UTC+08:45 kept by the small settlements down on the Eyre Highway. Strung across a b...

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