By Maureen Jones

Bullo River Station is located at the southwest corner of the map

I recently joined the head of Australia’s Northern Territory Tourism Commission, along with the vice presidents of Tourism Australia and Qantas Airways, to fly by chartered plane to a remote cattle station 1,000 miles from its nearest neighbor.

We flew into Darwin, at the top end of the territory, where we boarded our charter. Imagine a place where distance is measured in hours, time is recorded by the art carved into rocks over millennia and your mail is delivered by plane every seven weeks.

You have to be self-sufficient and tough to live in the outback and you have to be trained by the Flying Doctor Service to cope with medical emergencies.

I stayed at the Bullo River Station, not the kind of place you stumble across.

The owner’s father, Charles Henderson, bought the million acres in l950 and today visitors can watch cattle hands mustering and branding the Brahman cattle. His wife was Sara Henderson, a well known Australian author who chronicled life at the station in her books.

The airstrip is the lawn in front of the homestead. I was taken around the property in a helicopter with no doors - which I didn’t like.

My colleagues went horseback riding with some of the station hands. The station’s staff take hunters to shoot water buffalo and crocodiles in the Victoria and Bullo rivers. The scenery was spectacular, with vast areas of red rocks and big crocs. The aboriginal paintings on those rocks were some of the best I have seen.

The owner’s two little boys, 6 and 8, opened their eyes wide at my bag of gifts. The Walt Disney watches were the favorite item. I brought California jam for the hosts.

The boys’ studies are overseen from the town of Katharine, several hundred miles away, by a teacher who works with them by two-way radio. The School of the Air teaches thousands of children who live on remote stations. They see their teacher once a year when they go to the main school headquarters for a week.

The station has a separate, very comfortable bunkhouse for guests and a swimming pool. The cook was outstanding. There is no hard liquor, only wine with meals. They have to collect rain as drinking water, and driving into Kununurra for groceries periodically must be an adventure on the dirt road.

As Greg Norman wrote in the visitors’ book, “Thank you for showing my family the REAL Australia.” You haven’t been Down Under until you have been outback.

Maureen Jones is president of Los Altos-based All Horizons Travel. For more information, visit www.allhorizonstvl.com or call 941-5810.