Meaning of the word "station" 289

On Sat, 10 Dec 2005 00:40:14 -0400, Alison Causton

It depends. In Australia, it could mean either depending on the era and-or the locality. Our family owned what was, at least until the late 1950s, generally called a 'sheep station' in central-western New South Wales. Until then it was virtually an exclusively sheep operation with a small cattle sideline. Later, when the wool market bottomed out, we diversified with wheat and other crops. These days it would be called what it really always was, a small (for the area) mixed farm. Like most properties in the area, it was basically a one man operation with additional farm labor hired as required.

A few miles down the road was a place called Canonbar Station which was the still very large (100K acres plus) remnants of what had been prior to the turn of the late 19th-early 20th century three or four times that size. Our place, and most of the surrounding properties for miles around had once been part of the original Canonbar station. Even into the last quarter of the 20th century the homestead area formed a significant village with many houses for the stationhands and their families, most of which have since fallen into disuse as mechanisation and other economic factors have reduced the manpower used, with the few who are left more often than not preferring to live in the not too distant town, which is now readily accessible since everyone owns a motor vehicle or several.

Some of these huge operations still exist, particularly in the Outback, and most if not all would still be called 'stations'. Many of them consist of aggregations of a number of separate smaller properties, mostly contiguous, but often separated by many miles. Some smaller places, particluarly in the closer settled areas, which have long histories are often still called 'stations' even if the modern operation is, like ours, more accurately a mixed farm.

Mike