Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 - 1954), Sunday 29 September 1918, page 7


MEEHAN OF AUSTIN DOWNS

A fine robust type of the men who have blazed the pastoral track upon our goldfields is J. P. Meehan, of Aus-

tin Downs station (right up against. Cue and Day Dawn) and a few other' holdings in this country of vast spaces. J.P.M. is a Queenslander-in that State he was on old friend and staunch ad-mirer of the late F.C.B. Vosper before that many-sided man heard the West a-calling. But the Murchison squatter of to-day, the Queenslander stockman and overlander of the early 'nineties, came West very soon after Vosper, and wasn't long in discerning, with his practised eye, the grazing worth of the back country as well as its auriferous attractions. He trans-continented first in the middle 'nineties, from Port Douglas to Cue, and. dry as the track was in those days, he will still tell the story of how he carried a bottle of brandy with him (unopened) from one side of Australia to the other. Twice in the years -following he made the same formidable and lengthy trip that the trans-line has now reduced to a pleasant jaunt of a week or so. In the early days of the Murchison, Mr. Meehan busied himself with butcher-ing; and stock-dealing, but it was not long before he launched out into big-ger things. He took up the Austin Downs station for pastoral purposes, and obtained some of the leases for-merly held by Wainwright and Co., the big Geraldton firm that dabbled in everything rill an unkind fate brought them down. Mr. Median has now been settled on the Murchison ' for over 20 years,, and the best proof of his shrewd, judgment and his successful enterprise is that this year he shore 2S.000 sheep. For dose on 20 years he has been a magistrate, entitled to wear the same letters before and after his name. There is nobody who knows the coun-try better and no more enthusiastic be-liever in it, and no better judge of

sheep and cattle, than this vigorous i jand optimistic Murchison pioneer. j