Worked with someone on a cattle station you would like to catch up with again, but you have no idea where they live now? I’m often contacted by people seeking cattle station friends they don’t have contact details for. And there are quite a few people I’d like to catch up with myself – including some who probably don’t know they’re in the book A Million Acre Masterpiece, because the contact details they gave are no longer current. But I’m flat out keeping up with the people who join the mailing list – there’s no way there will ever be time to run a network connecting people.
Simon Cheatham started the ‘Ringers from the Top End’ Facebook site in 2007. With more than 1,000 members it is working as an ideal network for people who’ve worked on cattle stations in WA, NT, Qld, northern SA & western NSW – in other words, generally the parts of Australia that have the largest cattle stations. At last it’s possible to track down station friends you’ve lost touch with, via the internet. Simon also posts links to current news items that relate specifically to stations in outback regions – I don’t know of another directly relevant news summary like this anywhere – most are bogged down with general news on finance etc, and farming news that only relates to the more closely settled regions of southeastern and southwestern Australia. Check out Ringers from the Top End and consider joining, you never know who you might find – maybe someone who has been looking for you.