Qualla: Marqua Station https://qualla.com/marqua-station en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:28 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/c/w/marqua-station-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Marqua Station https://qualla.com/marqua-station Marqua Station: Introduction https://qualla.com/marqua-station/ Photo credit Don McInnes, CC BY-SA 4.0. The dirt that builds a cow at Marqua does not stay still. It blows in red sheets off the dunes when the wind comes up, it cracks into hard polygons when the rain stops, and once every few years it turns briefly, riotously green. This is a working cattle station on the far eastern edge of the Northern Territory, roughly 360 kilometres northeast of Alice Springs and a long way from anywhere a map bothers to name. The Plenty Highway, an unsealed track more than a road, clips the property's northwestern corner. Beyond the fence lines, the parallel sand ridges of the Simpson Desert begin their long march south.

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Image: Don McInnes | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/c/w/marqua-station-wp/r5cw-marqua-station-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Marqua Station: A Lease on the Margin https://qualla.com/marqua-station/ Photo credit Don McInnes, CC BY-SA 4.0. Marqua is a pastoral lease, which in the Australian outback means a right to graze rather than to own the land outright. The Crown keeps the title; the leaseholder keeps the cattle. The run covers about 4,410 square kilometres, a figure that sounds abstract until you realise it i...

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Image: Don McInnes | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/c/w/marqua-station-wp/r5cw-marqua-station-a-lease-on-the-margin.mp3 0:06 2 full Marqua Station: The Long Haul to Market https://qualla.com/marqua-station/ Photo credit Don McInnes, CC BY-SA 4.0. Distance is the central fact of a station this remote, and it shapes every decision. When John and Mary Atkins held the lease, they ran Marqua as a breeding property, raising cattle in the desert country and then trucking them more than a thousand kilometres east to their second ...

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Image: Don McInnes | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/c/w/marqua-station-wp/r5cw-marqua-station-the-long-haul-to-market.mp3 0:06 3 full Marqua Station: Fire and Flood https://qualla.com/marqua-station/ Photo credit Don McInnes, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2011 the country around Marqua endured the worst bushfires the region had seen since the 1970s. Roughly 200,000 acres of the station burned, a scale of loss that in settled country would be a catastrophe but in the outback is simply weather. Then the pendulum swung the other w...

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Image: Don McInnes | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/c/w/marqua-station-wp/r5cw-marqua-station-fire-and-flood.mp3 0:06 4 full Marqua Station: Where Three Worlds Meet https://qualla.com/marqua-station/ Photo credit Don McInnes, CC BY-SA 4.0. Marqua sits at a geographic seam. To the south and west, the Simpson Desert's dunes stretch toward the horizon, some of the most arid country on the continent. To the south, Aboriginal land held under trust marks a continuity of custodianship that long predates any pastoral lease...

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Image: Don McInnes | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/c/w/marqua-station-wp/r5cw-marqua-station-where-three-worlds-meet.mp3 0:06 5 full Marqua Station: What a Station Is Worth https://qualla.com/marqua-station/ Photo credit Don McInnes, CC BY-SA 4.0. Putting a price on country like this is its own peculiar art. In June 2011, the property changed hands for about A$7.22 million, sold on what the trade calls a walk-in walk-out basis, meaning the buyer took the land, the infrastructure, and the cattle on it as a single going conc...

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Image: Don McInnes | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/5/c/w/marqua-station-wp/r5cw-marqua-station-what-a-station-is-worth.mp3 0:06 6 full