Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982), Wednesday 7 September 1966, page 2


GOOD DAYS

ON BRUNETTE DOWNS

. Flat and empty is the landscape, all 4750 square miles, but in some lights movingly beautiful. Brunette Downs, Australia's third largest station, has been going ahead since it was bought seven years ago by the King Ranch Pastoral Company, an Australian-Texan ven-ture: well over 50,000 head of cattle roam the plain, and beef production is possibly a Northern Territory record in spite of the yearslong drought (eased by last January's rain). New methods have been introduced, but men on horses are still doing most of the work.

STOCKMEN cross the billabong near Brunette Downs homestead. The station keeps 1400 work horses.

ANAGER Charles Weiss with his dog ; oppy- The plane is used in checking

tnces and bores on the vast property.

FACES of stockmen at the station's picnic races (see pictures overleaf) had a don't-photograph-us expression.

EVENING in homestead: Mr. and Mrs. Martin Lemann, of Bowral, N.S.W., Mr. Weiss and Mrs. Pat Bridges, of Bowral.

SANTA GERTRUDIS CATTLE, which have been found well suited to north Australian con-ditions, gather round a turkey's-nest dam on Brunette Downs. The owners have sunk 75 artesian bores to combat future drought, and brought in more than 1200 Santa Gertrudis crossbred stud bulls to improve the stock. The only larger properties are Alexandria and Wave

Hill, both also in the Northern Territory.

PICTURES BY

DOUGLASS BAGLIN

CONTINUED OVERLEAF

GOOD DAYS ON

BRUNETTE DOWNS

Continued from previous page

STOCK HORSE looks like an aristocrat, but ¡t's inured to all the noise, dust, heat, danger even.

The round-up

ANTHILLS and beet-wood trees are the only features across vast areas of the Downs. Temperatures in summer go far above the century mark for weeks at a time. Drought used to take an enormous toll of stock, but things are different now, with the scores of bores and dams and 3000 miles of new graded track across the property. Thirteen thousand head of cattle were "turned off" for the beef market last season.

The races

ROAD TRAIN BRINGS HORSES to the Brunette Downs picnic races - for the rest of the year it's used for moving cattle. The flinders grass was glowing yellow in the after-noon sun when this picture was taken, and people of the cattle country for hundreds of miles around vere bound for the races. Nearest town, Tennant Creek, is 225 miles away.

VARIED CROWD get ready to lay their bets.

RACEHORSES string out down the straight.

WATCHING from stockyards by racetrack.

CONTINUED OVERLEAF

. lt was a sun-drenched honeymoon in Tahiti for Brigitte Bardot -and her third husband, German playboy-industrialist Gunther Sachs

von Opel. People are asking - will this marriage last?

BRIGITTE AND HER MILLIONAIRE

BRIGITTE AND GUNTHER were taken from Papeete by private plane to the small island of Tupai, where they lived in a house owned by a friend, went sailing, swimming, fishing

BB and her millionaire (from page 7)

BRIGITTE is 31 two years younger than Gunther, and they were married just after midnight on July 14, which is France's national day. Her previous husbands were the film director Roger Vadim and the actor Jacques Charrier.

OUTRIGGER-SAILING provided good sport on the lagoons. After their fortnight in the islands the couple flew to Acapulco, in Mexico, to continue their honeymoon. Shooting for Brigitte's next film starts in Scotland this month.