Grace Perry

I don’t know that my story is any different to any other rural or remote mum that has come before me, is in this with me or will do this after me but even so I feel it’s a story worth sharing. I fell in love with the bush at a young age, family holidays were spent camping in remote parts of Australia, The Victorian High Country & Cape York were favorites that stayed with me over time.

As I grew older I’d ride my horse through the small parcel of bushland that was behind our small 1 acre block of land. I’d listen to the bell birds, I’d watch the kangaroos shyly hop away at the approach of hooves and I’d watch the light dance off the eucalypt’s. At 19 years old I headed to what I considered the real outback, the Northern Territory. I did two years as a station hand, the hardest and best two years of my life. I left, but would find myself returned 5 years later to the land that had captivated me but I had not yet explored. Soon I met a man that captured my heart me and we now raise our two girls on one of the most remote Cattle Stations in the NT that sprawls across 673,200 hectares. We arrived here with a 5 day old and an 18 month old ready to tackle our first management position. We have faced fire and flood, freak weather events, bug invasions and corellas all but taking over. I spent much of my first year bound to the station complex keeping the grass green and watching my washing dry on the winds of the Tanami, or so that’s how it felt as I was no longer able to be out and about in the bush I so loved. As my girls grow older I can show them the beauty and danger that surrounds us. The pink on the galah’s watering at the trough, the deep red on the Roo’s, the sunset each night. They love to be apart of a muster, watching the chopper bring the cattle together and the horses on the mob. They recognize the smoke haze in the air at the end of the dry season, they watch the clouds for rain in the build up asking ‘when will Huey send it down’. We are far from family, far from many of the things people consider a necessity but in this simple way of living I have found I have the strength to get through the hard times and my life is full of so much joy and beauty. There is much more to life on a cattle station than the cattle.

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👉  This story excerpt is from Issue #18 of Kickin Up Dust magazine: December 2023.