Queensland State Archives posted a photo:
Station Life
Station life was hard and made harder by the isolation. The hub of any station was the homestead. Whether or not there was a ‘Missus’ to run the essential backup services for all who lived on the big properties, someone had to be responsible for the feeding, such medical care as could be given, and the provision of a place for the management to operate.
Sometimes these functions would have been performed by the owner’s or manager’s wife, sometimes by paid help. Many station cooks were male, and the boss was often the provider of health and welfare for the station hands.
For many properties the great distance and the transport problems meant that orders had to go in for twelve months. Typical was an order for one station in 1888, which included 2 tons of flour, 1 ton of common salt (meat had to be