Indee Station

On the way to Port Headland, I saw a car alongside the road and an Aboriginal waving, so I stopped.  He'd run out of petrol, then flattened his battery: While he had a jerrrycan of petrol, he needed to be jump started.  He said he and his wife were from Coober Pedy, traveling around visiting friends & relatives, and had been there for two days broken down.  I asked about food and they said they were OK, but I opened a pack of biscuits and shared them around:  They were quick to grab as biscuit so I left the pack with them.  We connected up leads, and shortly a couple of stockmenn also rolled up.  In summary, it turned out his immobilser had been engaged and needed resetting, requiring bringing the car to a mechanical garage:  As it was an automatic transmission, it couldn't be towed and needed to be loaded onto a truck/trailer, such as most towing companies now use.  One of the stockmen said Indee Station may have one so as there was nothing more I could do, I agreed to drive on to Indee Station ("...only about 30-40 km up the road" and then another 9km off the highway on a gravel road into the station) and ask them to help.  On arrival, they said they had no vehicle capable of loading the car so in the finish we passed the information on to the Police.  Meanwhile, I discovered they had a caravan park on the station so I booked in for a couple of nites.

NB:  I have subsequently been warned that it is very dangerous to stop for anyone in remote areasI am doubly happy in this case that I didn't come to grief and that I was able to help.

Every evening at 5:30 PM they have Happy Hour - they have an open section (roofed over) in the middle of their homestead, with living quarters on either side.  It has a table that seats about 30 people and it was full both of the nites I was there!  A retired quarry owner was there and volunteered to take a group on a tour of the station & quarry for a donation to the RFDS, an opportunity quickly seized by half a dozen people.  It was quite amazing, he showed us two railways running thru the station, they are about 500m apart and one belongs to BHP & the other FMG; they run parallel virtually all the way to Port Headland, but they cannot agree to share so each have their own rail.  Gina Rhineheart is in the process of building a third parallel line as no share arrangement can be negotiated.  He also gave us a good background into the quarry, which was set up to provide basecourse for the railways (he was happy they built two!).

The large bridge was nearly underwater not many months ago, as the area was virtually an inland sea after heavy rains.  Hard to imagine, when at the moment it looked pretty dry and thirsty country.  The station is 250,000 Ha and runs about 1,000 head of cattle - understocked at the moment due to previous drought.  They were hit hard financially by the sudden halt in exports to Indonesia and relatively recent drought.  The station was wiped out by a cyclone a number of years ago and the owner spent three years with a brickmold making the concrete blocks to build a new, cyclone safe homestead.  It was hit again in 2007, and while much damage occurred, the homestead survived.  They were mustering at the time so while we didn't see the boss cocky, his wife was supervising meals for the stockmen & Happy Hour at the station:  Apparently the owner came in the second evening with a bad gash in his thigh but said he wasn't going to hospital:  A fellow who knows him and saw the wound reckoned he should go to hospital, and also reckoned his wife would order him to go!

A pleasant stay, the tour was fascinating and a small glimpse into an operating station.