[woofa.express]

Home Valley station.

To the north of El Questro is Home Valley. 1970. It had been owned by Harold McNamara who had just sold and moved to Wyndham and bought a taxi cab - that was his retirement and now he was much older than most who retire. A bloke from Perth had bought Home Valley and he didn’t have much idea of how to run a rural property let alone an outback one. I went across to muster his cattle which Harold was taking possession of as part of payment. Harold told me about his earlier days. He and a few ringers had ridden 2 days and stolen a good number of cattle. It took him 3 days to get them home. He dropped off the branded cattle and got only clean skins back. The cops suspected Harold and went to Home Valley to do a search. Harold hired them a horse team and provided for them. Harold said they spent considerable time barramundi fishing . Very lucrative Harold said and we all enjoyed ourselves. Of course they didn’t find branded cattle. Do you think I’d be so stupid he asked. Harold certainly was a scallywag and knew what skulduggery was.
Cattle theft in America is known as cattle rustling. In Australia it is known as poddy dodging. I have known many incidents which never did come to the owners attention. There was no such thing as boundary fences. Aerial mustering could be used to poddy dodge. I didn’t know where property boundaries were and being young, keen and naive was easily hoodwinked. I’d muster where I was asked. Aeroplanes didn’t leave marks like a stock camp would.
Home Valley had a good quality herd, Santa Gertrudis or cross bred. They had been part of the Wyndham meat works stud.


I have deleted from here on as I have discovered part of the station history on the internet and some of it contradicts what I had written. I will rewrite it, possibly for tomorrow. It is even more interesting than I had imagined.