The owner of our cottage may do a little remodeling, so the contractor came over the other day to take a look around.
When we met Brett a few weeks ago, he mentioned that his sheep were getting ready to give birth. Jamie and I assumed he owned of those pretty little hobby farms that are so popular here in the Barossa Valley. Maybe a couple acres and a dozen or so sheep and perhaps an alpaca or two.
We were wrong. Very wrong.
Canegrass Station is not in the Barossa and it’s not a hobby. It’s about 170 km (105 miles) north of Angaston. And when we asked how big it was Brett said, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s big. Maybe twenty kilometers long and thirty kilometers wide.”
Translation: 128,000 acres.
It’s so big it has its own private airstrip. It has 280 miles of graded roads. Brett’s family has installed more than 200 miles of fencing and built a dozen or so dams and reservoirs.
He told us that the homestead is about 40 miles from the nearest grocery store down a bone-jarring dirt road.
Don’t forget the milk.