Drysdale River Station

Drysdale River Station is a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station in Western Australia.

It is located just off the Kalumburu Road 360 kilometres (224 mi) west of Kununurra and 470 kilometres (292 mi) east of Derby in the Kimberley region.

The station is approximately 1,000,000 acres (404,686 ha) in size and runs about 7,000 head of cattle.

The traditional owners of the area are the Ngarinjin, Miwa and Wilawila peoples.

The pastoral lease is currently owned by the Koeyers family who took up the lease in 1985. The Koeyers run about 8,000 head of cattle on the million acre, 4,047 square kilometres (1,563 sq mi) property.

The area was initially taken up in 1882 by the Victorian Squatting Company and the Drysdale River was named by explorer Charles Burrowes in 1886. The company estimated the size of the run as being about 5 million acres, or 20,234 square kilometres (7,812 sq mi). Burrowes had been sent by the company to survey it and compile a report, wrote a glowing account of the country and prophesizeda great future for it. Captain Joe Bradshaw took up the lease in 1891 as part of a large area extending along the Prince Regent River. While lost during an exploration of the area Bradshaw stumbled across the Indigenous Australian Gwion Rock paintings which are over 50,000 years old and are commonly referred to as the Bradshaws once rediscovered in 1998. He sent his steamer, the Red Gauntlet, ahend of him with Aeneas Gunn to construct stockyards while Bradshaw began to drove his herd overland from Queensland. Bradshaw was met at the border by a party of policemen who demanded a tax of 1 pound per head to bring them into Western Australia. He refused and took his stock down the Victoria River to establish another station, Bradshaw's Run now known as Bradshaw Station. The remoteness of the station was partially remedied by the surveying and construction of the Kalumburu Road from the Gibb River Road to Kalumburu in 1954.

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