Cordillo Downs or Cordillo Downs Station is both a

pastoral lease A pastoral lease, sometimes called a pastoral run, is an arrangement used in both Australia and New Zealand where government-owned Crown land is leased out to Pastoral farming, graziers for the purpose of livestock grazing on rangelands. Austral ...

currently operating as a cattle station and a formal bounded locality in

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...

. It is located about north of Innamincka and south east of Birdsville. The name and boundaries of the locality were created on 26 April 2013 for the long established local name. The station once occupied an area of and was regarded as Australia's largest

sheep Sheep (: sheep) or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are a domesticated, ruminant mammal typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus '' Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to d ...

station (in the 1880s, Cordillo set a record of

shearing Sheep shearing is the process by which the woollen fleece of a sheep is cut off. The person who removes the sheep's wool is called a '' shearer''. Typically each adult sheep is shorn once each year (depending upon dialect, a sheep may be sai ...

over 85,000 sheep in a season). One of the best known features of the station is the

heritage Heritage may refer to: History and society * A heritage asset A heritage asset is an item which has value because of its contribution to a nation's society, knowledge and/or culture. Such items are usually physical assets, but some countries also ...

-listed woolshed that is constructed of stone with a curved

tin Tin is a chemical element; it has symbol Sn () and atomic number 50. A silvery-colored metal, tin is soft enough to be cut with little force, and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, a bar of tin makes a sound, the ...

roof, built this way due to a lack of timber in the area. Cordillo gets around 167.3mm of rain annually.

History

First taken up by John Frazer from Victoria in 1875 the station was initially known as Cardilla. Frazer let the property go in 1878 and a

ballot A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16th cent ...

was held, the lease going to Edgar Chapman, who sold off in 1883 to Peter Waite of the Beltana Pastoral Company. The property was stocked with just over 10,000 sheep, nearly 600 cattle and about 30 horses. In 1903 the property was amalgamated with two other stations, Cadelga and Haddon Downs, and had a flock of around 85,000 by 1905. The homestead was abandoned for a few years during the 1930s. A plague of rats swept across the property from further north in Queensland in 1940, they were prevented from making it further south by the flooded Cooper Creek. Cattle replaced sheep on the station in 1942 when the manager, Mr Napier, decided that the

wild dog A free-ranging dog is a dog that is not confined to a yard or house. Free-ranging dogs include street dogs, village dogs, stray dogs, feral dogs, etc., and may be owned or unowned. The global dog population is estimated to be 900 million, of whi ...

s that were prevalent in the area and were inside the boundary fence at the time would cause less damage. The entire area was struck by

drought A drought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, ...

in 1946 with many cattle dying and properties destocking. Airmail delivery to remote properties in

outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than Australian bush, the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastli ...

South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland commenced in 1949. Cordillo Downs along with other remote properties including Mungerannie, Clifton Hills, Glengyle, Davenport Downs, Morney Plains, Mount Leonard, Durrie, Mulka, Tanbar, Durham Downs, Nappa Merrie, Lake Pure and Naryilco were also on the route. The Cooper Creek broke its banks in 1950 resulting in widespread flooding through the area. A

meteor A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star, is a glowing streak of a small body (usually meteoroid) going through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a ...

was thought to have landed somewhere at Cordillo in 1954. The bright flash and ball of fire that lasted for several minutes was spotted from many properties including Innamincka, Muloorina and Narilya, all of whom reported the phenomena to the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Beltana owned the property until 1981 when they sold it to Brookman Holdings for $1.2 million. Brookman holdings is owned by the Brook family, Bill Brook was 81 years old when he bought Cordillo, where he was employed in 1918 as a ringer for 30

shillings The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence ...

per week. The property was owned by Anthony and Janet Brook in 2012, both of whom met

Prince Charles Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. Charles was born at Buckingham Palace during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI, and ...

and Camilla in Longreach during their 2012 tour of the outback. The Brooks run a herd of approximately 40,000

Hereford Hereford ( ) is a cathedral city and the county town of the ceremonial county of Herefordshire, England. It is on the banks of the River Wye and lies east of the border with Wales, north-west of Gloucester and south-west of Worcester. With ...

cattle and are certified organic producers of beef using the OBE Beef label. Both the historic main Cordillo Downs Homestead and Woolshed and the Cadelga Homestead Ruins are listed on the

South Australian Heritage Register The South Australian Heritage Register, also known as the SA Heritage Register, is a statutory register of historic places in South Australia. It extends legal protection regarding demolition and development under the ''Heritage Places Act 1993'' ...

. The woolshed was damaged by a storm in 2017, and restored with the help of Scottish stonemasons, with the work completed in July 2019. The stonework was restored using the traditional techniques, and the roof that had been blown off was replaced.

Geography, vegetation and geology

The terrain of the country is flat with undulating

gibber plain A desert pavement, also called reg (in western Sahara), serir (in eastern Sahara), gibber (in Australia), or saï (in central Asia) is a desert surface covered with closely packed, interlocking angular or rounded Rock (geology), rock fragments ...

s with sandhills and claypans. The land is prone to

but otherwise has a light grass covering. Native vegetation found in the area include Mitchell grass, katoora, spinifex, cane grass, sandhill wattle and Bladder saltbush. Cordillo Downs is situated in the

channel country The Channel Country is a region of outback Australia mostly in the state of Queensland but also in parts of South Australia, Northern Territory and New South Wales. The name comes from the numerous Braided river, intertwined rivulets that cro ...

and is periodically inundated with water from heavy rains further north, resulting in lush vegetation growth immediately afterwards. Some pasture species that appear when the water recede are Nardoo, Cooper Clover, Verbine, Lignum as well as many grasses. The Cordillo Downs road links the station with Innamincka and the Birdsville Developmental Road.

References

{{Coord, 26.70856, S, 140.6201, E, type:landmark_region:AU-SA, display=title Stations in South Australia Far North (South Australia) 1875 establishments in Australia

History

Geography, vegetation and geology

See also

References