Napco, the cattle giant

Marion Downs-Camp – 23.09.2002 – 28.09.2002

Every day we realize more and more how important it was and is for us to have made a stopover here on Marion Downs. In the meantime, I have been able to record almost all of our experiences over the last few weeks in 65 computer pages, which equates to around 150 book pages. It’s strenuous work that demands a lot of discipline from me every day. Although it sometimes stretches me to the limit, I hope to bring a lot of joy to our readers with all these stories and hopefully convey some interesting facts.

Through the long stay here and many conversations with the always friendly and helpful Robert Jansen, I also found out a lot about our hosts. Marion Downs is one of 14 farms that are all owned by Napco (The North Australian Pastoral Company). Napco was founded in 1877 by the pioneers Sir Thomas Mcllwraith, William Collins and William Forrester and is today one of the oldest cattle companies in Australia.

Marion Downs alone is one of the largest farms in Queensland and Australia, covering an enormous 10,100 square kilometers. In some places, the farm is over 230 kilometers long. All 14 stations cover an area of 64,088 (sixty-four thousand) square kilometers. This means a length of 320 km times a width of 200 km. This in turn means that this largely privately owned property covers 0.8 percent of the entire Australian continent. Perhaps to put it more clearly, 64,088 square kilometers is almost as big as the island of Tasmania. Napco owns around 180,000 cattle, of which around 60,000 end up in people’s stomachs every year. Napco has even recently started exporting to Japan and Korea.

So I finally see land and can put the records to rest for a few days. Not for long, of course, because as Tanja and I have discovered, hardly a day goes by in our expedition and travel life without something new happening. Since yesterday, for example, Istan has been suffering from an infection. His genitals and a thirty-centimeter-long strip on his stomach are swollen. He has already stuck a thorn in his body on New Haven, which just won’t come out. We give him medicine against the inflammation and hope that he will soon recover.

Beth the farm dog unexpectedly gives birth to eight cute puppies. Five of them die on the second day. It’s very hot again and as hardly anyone can look after the puppies in the hustle and bustle of the big farm, Tanja takes on this task. She builds a wire mesh enclosure right outside Robert’s office so that someone can always keep an eye on the young mother dog and her puppies. At night, Beth sleeps outside our window with her newborns and shares the terrace with Rufus. The three little ones are developing excellently under Tanja’s care and give us a lot of pleasure.

I use the time to take care of the route ahead of us. When I phone Dean from the Huckitta station, he warns us about the Desert Poison Bush. It should grow between here and Longreach. Desert Poison Bush contains the poison 1080, which is absolutely deadly. One bite is enough to kill cattle and camels instantly. We do not yet know how to proceed. Maybe we have to take a detour around the area again? We’ll see…