Qualla: Coorabulka

Coorabulka: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Somewhere over the dark plains between Boulia and Winton, a light appears. It hovers above the horizon, fuzzy and disc-shaped, sometimes white, sometimes shifting toward red or green. It seems to follow travellers, keeping its distance, never letting itself be reached. This is the Min Min light, the most famous unexplained phenomenon in the Australian outback, and the country around Coorabulka Station sits squarely within the haunted ground where it has been reported for more than a century. Coorabulka is a working cattle run between the Diamantina and Georgina Rivers. It is also a place where the land itself seems, on certain nights, to glow.

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Coorabulka: The Light That Will Not Be Caught

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The Min Min light takes its name from a locality between Boulia and Winton, and accounts of it stretch back to at least 1912, with a widely told sighting by a stockman around 1918. For the Aboriginal people of this country, the lights are older still, understood in some tradition...

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Coorabulka: Between Two Rivers

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Coorabulka lies 99 kilometres south-east of Boulia, set in the Channel Country between the Diamantina and Georgina Rivers. It runs to 6,370 square kilometres and can carry around 8,000 head of cattle, mostly across open downs of Mitchell and Flinders grass, with about a quarter o...

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Coorabulka: Water From Far Below

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. In a land this dry, the most valuable thing on Coorabulka came from beneath it. In 1901 the new owners sank the station's first bore, driving down 680 feet until they struck the Great Artesian Basin and released a flow of over a million gallons. Three years later, a sixth bore hi...

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Image: Public domain

Coorabulka: Up to the Roof

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. For all its dependence on water, Coorabulka has nearly drowned more than once. In 1904 it was nearly washed away when nine inches of rain fell in a week and both the Diamantina and Farrar Creek ran in big flood. The most harrowing episode came in 1949, when the Green family, livi...

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Image: Public domain