Brunette Downs: Fiona Lake’s Head On finalist

Brunette Downs cattle station is bigger than Jamaica. You’re looking here at a small corner of a 700sq km paddock!

TWAM 9 April 2016

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Brunette Downs is bigger than Jamaica. Bigger than Lebanon or the Gambia. The cattle station, a single pastoral lease, stretches for more than 12,000 sq km over the flat grasslands of the Barkly Tableland. You’re looking at a small corner of a 700 sq km paddock; there are no fences in sight because they’re over the horizon, even from the vantage point of a chopper working with hands on the ground to muster these steers to the yards – a job that took from 5am to sunset.

Fiona Lake’s fascination with the cattle stations of the Top End began on the day in 1984 that she lobbed at a Gulf Country property to start her first job. She’d grown up on a wheat and sheep farm beside the Murray River, but this was something else entirely. “You’d ride a whole day without stopping to open a gate,” says Lake, 53. “The newspapers and mail arrived once a week by plane, most of the food was tinned, and storms or sunspots would render the radio phone useless. In the Wet, the place was cut off for weeks…”

The Townsville-based photographer, whose shot is a finalist in the Head On Photo Festival, has seen big changes since then: hot showers, ice cream and wi-fi are now the norm, women are no longer an oddity, and news arrives at the speed of light. But the characters are as stoic, funny and skilful as ever, she says.

In the lottery of the rains across the north, the Barkly Tableland has struck lucky lately. Now, as mustering and weaning begins in earnest, the land is green and the lakes are full. With cattle fetching a good price, and mines no longer poaching all the talent, the Barkly is set to capitalise. Amid all the grim news about drought, Lake says, here at least “there’s a fantastic air of optimism”.