Qualla: Delta Downs Station https://qualla.com/delta-downs-station en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:40:32 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/h/u/r/delta-downs-station-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Delta Downs Station https://qualla.com/delta-downs-station Delta Downs Station: Introduction https://qualla.com/delta-downs-station/ Photo credit Chargois, A., Public domain. For a century, the Kurtijar people watched other men run cattle across their Country. The land near the mouth of the Gilbert River had been their saltwater Country long before it was fenced, named Morr Morr in their own tongue, but from the 1880s it was a pastoral lease passed between distant owners - a London bank, a sea captain's estate, names on auction notices in Brisbane newspapers. Then, nearly a hundred years later, the Kurtijar did something almost no Aboriginal community in Australia had managed. They got it back, and they ran it themselves.

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Image: Chargois, A. | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/h/u/r/delta-downs-station-wp/rhur-delta-downs-station-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Delta Downs Station: Country Held by Others https://qualla.com/delta-downs-station/ Photo credit Chargois, A., Public domain. Delta Downs was established before 1889 and changed hands the way frontier leases did - by sale and by auction, far from the people whose Country it occupied. In 1895 it was trading cattle under the London Bank of Australia. By 1912 it spanned some 638 square miles and carried 9,...

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Image: Chargois, A. | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/h/u/r/delta-downs-station-wp/rhur-delta-downs-station-country-held-by-others.mp3 0:06 2 full Delta Downs Station: Morr Morr https://qualla.com/delta-downs-station/ Photo credit Chargois, A., Public domain. In 1982, Kurtijar elders set out to change that. They formed the Morr Morr Pastoral Company, taking the station's older name as their own, and pressed their claim to run their Country as a working business. The following year, in 1983, the federal government bought Delta Downs fo...

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Image: Chargois, A. | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/h/u/r/delta-downs-station-wp/rhur-delta-downs-station-morr-morr.mp3 0:06 3 full Delta Downs Station: Making It Work https://qualla.com/delta-downs-station/ Photo credit Chargois, A., Public domain. Ownership was a beginning, not a guarantee. The Kurtijar had to run Delta Downs as a real station in a hard country, and they did. By 1988 it turned a profit of around 800,000 dollars and was on track to be among the first properties to meet tough new disease-eradication standard...

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Image: Chargois, A. | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/h/u/r/delta-downs-station-wp/rhur-delta-downs-station-making-it-work.mp3 0:06 4 full Delta Downs Station: Drought, Debt and Endurance https://qualla.com/delta-downs-station/ Photo credit Chargois, A., Public domain. No Gulf station escapes hard years, and Delta Downs has had its share. By 2013 the company was carrying about a million dollars in debt and had to let nineteen workers go, squeezed by the collapse of the live-export trade, severe drought, and a three-year quarantine after a suspe...

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Image: Chargois, A. | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/h/u/r/delta-downs-station-wp/rhur-delta-downs-station-drought-debt-and-endurance.mp3 0:06 5 full