Qualla: Gogo Station

Gogo Station: Introduction

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1928, the herd count at Gogo Station reached 90,000 -- the largest of any station in Western Australia. The property stretched across more than two and a half million acres of Fitzroy River floodplain, and its manager Ted Millard had spent seven years sinking wells and stringing 170 miles of fencing across country that, for the previous three decades, had been grazed without a single paddock. Gogo was not just a cattle station. It was a small empire built on grass, water, and the relentless labour of people whose names rarely made the newspapers.

Read more: Gogo Station on Qualla

Gogo Station: The Emanuels' Kingdom

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Alexander Forrest explored the Fitzroy River country in 1879 and returned with enthusiastic reports of well-grassed, well-watered land ideal for grazing. Among those who listened were the Durack and Emanuel families, who between them claimed over one million acres along the Fitzr...

Read more: Gogo Station on Qualla

Gogo Station: Shipping Cattle by Sea

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In an era before reliable roads connected the Kimberley to southern markets, Gogo's cattle reached the outside world by ship. The station drove herds to the port of Derby, where vessels like the Centaur, Minderoo, and Charon loaded them for voyages south to Fremantle, Port Hedlan...

Read more: Gogo Station on Qualla

Gogo Station: Ticks, Drought, and Gas

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Kimberley tested even the largest operations. Cattle tick arrived at Gogo in 1918-19, probably transferred from neighbouring Louisa Downs Station. It devastated the herd so severely that branding dropped from 12,000 to 4,800 in a single year. The drought of 1951-53 -- the fir...

Read more: Gogo Station on Qualla

Gogo Station: The People Behind the Numbers

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ted Millard arrived as station manager in 1921 and found three decades of overgrazing had degraded the frontage pastures along the river. He spent the next 30 years transforming the operation -- sinking ten wells in the back country, installing 170 miles of fencing, and gradually...

Read more: Gogo Station on Qualla

Gogo Station: Still Standing

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The homestead built in 1918 from concrete blocks still stands, situated near caves that were carved out in the 1940s. By 2010, the New South Wales-based Harris family owned the station and conducted large-scale wet-season cropping trials, planting 480 hectares of sorghum to fatte...

Read more: Gogo Station on Qualla