Helen Springs Station

Helen Springs Station more commonly known as Helen Springs is a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station.

It is located about 104 kilometres (65 mi) south of Elliott and 340 kilometres (211 mi) east of Kalkaringi in the Northern Territory. The property shares a boundary with Banka Banka to the south, Eva Downs to the east, Ucharonidge and Tandyidgee to the north and Muckaty and Powell Creek Station to the west.

The station was founded prior to 1885 with Messrs Douglas and Hemphill's stock are running near Helen's Springs near Tompkinson Creek on the telegraph line.

Composed primarily of open grazing land the property occupies an area of 10,198 square kilometres (3,937 sq mi).

Following a dry season in 1928, heavy rains came at the start of the wet season in 1929 causing the creeks to flood and waters to wash away several fences and large river gums.

Edith Bohning and her daughters, Esther and Elsie, became known as the petticoat drovers when the two girls took a mob of cattle from Alice Springs to Adelaide by train in 1929. Mr. Bohning was asked by a railway inspector how the two women would cope to which he replied if those two ladies can’t handle the situation then it will be no use getting your men to try.

Helen Springs was acquired by the Vestey Group in 1944 as well as some other smaller holdings in the area as part of extending their operations in the Northern Territory.

The Vestey Group had become interested in using road trains to move stock instead of overlanding using drovers in the 1950s. They hired Stan Mason who arrived at the station in 1951 then worked with Kurt Johannsen in Alice Springs in 1954 to ultimately develop the Rotinoff Viscount, the first of which arrived in Australia in 1957.

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