Flinders Ranges: Alpana Station mixes farm life and tourism

AN enterprising couple has discovered tourism helps pay their bills, writes JAMES WAGSTAFF

In-tents operation: David and Sally Henery on their Alpana Station near Blinman in the South Australian Flinders Ranges.

ALPANA  Station may be a good five hours’ drive from the nearest capital city. But its isolation is proving its salvation.

The 20,600ha working sheep station, run by the Henery family, is located just south of Blinman — South Australia’s highest town with a population of just 18 — in the thick of one of outback Australia’s most popular tourist destinations, the Flinders Ranges.

So when 10-plus years of drought hit in the 1990s, the family sought to capitalise on the growing tourism trade touring by their mailbox by opening up the station to farmstay accommodation.

“It was borne out of necessity because of the drought,” said Sally Henery, whose husband David’s forebears first settled the property in 1878.

“We had four generations of the family at that stage ­financially dependent on the farm’s income.

“We wanted to stay here but it was a case of how can we ­afford to stay here?

“Tourism was a great option. We are in a really good ­location so we were lucky, and a lot of stations had already got into tourism, some 20 years before we started and it was obviously working for them.”

SEAL OF APPROVAL

SALLY said the sealing of the road from Wilpena, home to the Flinders Ranges’ major drawcard Wilpena Pound, to Blinman in 2009 had made a huge difference to the trade.

They welcome campers from across Australia and overseas, with South Australia the biggest market followed by Victoria. Guests range from “families with little kids through to the grey nomads”.

Accommodation options range from self-contained shearers quarters and hut accommodation (minimum $150 for four people) to camping and powered sites with ensuites ($40 for two people). For the adventurous they also have their own 4WD tracks.

David said the family property, which began as a 54ha block and was added to “paddock by paddock as they became available” over the years, was “on the smaller end of the scale” for the region.

The country is a mixture of freehold, perpetual lease and pastoral lease country reviewed every 42 years.

It receives about 275mm of rain, but last year measured about 400mm.

“It started off dry but came good,” David said, adding there were now grasses for the sheep to eat as well as the traditional wattle, acacia, spinifex and bullabush.

The property, which stretches 30km from north to south, sits on 700 million year-old “pre-plant life, pre-animal life, nutrient-poor rock-slash-shale”. “The youngest rocks on the western parts of Alpana would be 520 million years old,” Sally said.

The highest country is about 750m above sea level.

Sally said Blinman was at a similar altitude to Canberra with “really hot summers and really cold winters”.

RAM RAID

THE Henerys run a self-replacing flock of 3500 Merinos, based on Collinsville bloodlines, including 1000 ewes which lamb in May.

“It’s pretty tough country up here for the ewes, the wethers do better,” Sally said.

Wethers are run on the hill country until they are up to six years old and sold through the auction system in Adelaide.

The Merinos cut an average 6-7kg of 22-23-micron wool at shearing in October and November. David said mustering “doesn’t happen overnight” and was usually a month-long process involving collecting sheep at bore water points.

The wool cheque is still the property’s biggest source of income, last year producing more than 100 bales which are sold through the Melbourne wool stores.

David said wool prices were “hanging in there”. A feral goat population on the property also adds to the bottom line.

As for the future, the Henerys say the farming and tourism aspects to their operation complement each other. This year their son, John, will return to the farm to be the sixth-generation Henery working there.

“We just seem to be getting busier every year,” Sally said. “Or we might be getting slower,” jokes David.