Qualla: Madura Station

Madura Station: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bahnfrend, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the 1870s, on the dry rim of the Nullarbor, men set out to raise horses for a war on the other side of the world. Madura Station was settled in 1876 not for sheep or cattle but for cavalry remounts, animals destined to be shipped from the coast at Eucla and sold to the British Army in India. The country was chosen for one reason above all others: water. In a land of brackish bores and false hopes, Madura had rare free-flowing freshwater, and that single advantage gave rise to one of the largest pastoral holdings in the country, a run that today covers more ground than the entire nation of Brunei.

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Image: Bahnfrend | CC BY-SA 3.0

Madura Station: Horses for an Empire

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. 17177 assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. The first lease was taken up by G. Heinzmann in 1876, and the early venture aimed squarely at the British Indian Army, which needed sound horses for service on the North-West Frontier, in what is now Pakistan. The traditional owners of this country are the Mirning people, whose l...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. 17177 assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Madura Station: A Country That Fought Back

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heiko Volland, Public domain. The land tested everyone who tried to hold it. A rabbit plague swept west through the district in 1901, with millions of animals reported between Eucla and the Nullarbor. Artesian bores were sunk deep, one pumping 37,000 imperial gallons a day from 2,200 feet to keep stock alive....

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Image: Heiko Volland | Public domain

Madura Station: Lives on the Edge

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bahnfrend, CC BY-SA 3.0. Isolation made every emergency a matter of life and death. In 1935 the station manager, W. O'Donovan, fell dangerously ill, and Goldfields Airways flew a doctor in aboard a new Fox Moth and carried him to Kalgoorlie. He died the next day of an internal haemorrhage. Two years late...

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Image: Bahnfrend | CC BY-SA 3.0

Madura Station: From Homestead to Highway Stop

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bahnfrend, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1950, after six years of drought had stripped the station of stock, the manager Robert Mackie began converting the homestead into something travellers could use, installing petrol pumps and turning the buildings into a motel-hotel with a liquor licence. The pastoral story did ...

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Image: Bahnfrend | CC BY-SA 3.0