24th June 2026: had a relaxing start to the day then decided to go on the afternoon tour of Fairview Station in a large bus-like 4 WD, led by a guy who has a good driver but didn’t seem to know a whole lot about the place. There were only 4 of us on the tour, and I volunteered to open the gates we had to go through. This involved getting out and into the vehicle without an extra stepping stool and opening a variety of fastenings on a number of gates , only one being a padlock! Fortunately I could do it!

The Station is 1,000,000 acres and home to 10,000 to 20,000 cattle Brahmans and a type of Red beef breed. At each muster, the cattle are first spotted by helicopter. They are never able to round up more than 70% of the herd at one time. They don’t use cattle dogs because they bite the cattle’s leg or nibble their ear and then that particular animal can’t be sold once it has bite masks.

The cattle mainly go to cattle sales in Mareeba, with a few sold locally.

We didn’t see much wildlife- one agile wallaby, galahs, 3 red tailed black cockatoos, red-winged parrots and little egrets on the dams. The terrain was wooded to varying degrees with 3 different types of termite mounds/those thin flat ones oriented north south, the fat clumpy ones and the type which is merely a mound attached to the base of a tree. We visited the grave of a pioneering farmers wife- Mary Thompson who lived in the area in the late nineteenth century. We visited a small waterfall on the little Laura River which feeds into the Laura River which feeds into the Kennedy river.

We then left Fairfield Station and headed for Laura where we camped behind the Peninsula Hotel. Nic had lamb shanks and I had my favourite grilled barramundi.