FLYING over Gindalbie station, the deep red soil and changing landscape have a powerful allure.
The colour contrast and desolate stretches of land exert a force few words could describe, epitomising what outback WA is all about.
Gindalbie is a 45-minute drive off Kalgoorlie's beaten track, yet few people would have an opportunity to see this part of the country.
For many decades, third-generation pastoralist Steve Tonkin and wife Jo-Anne have called it home.
The Tonkins breathe pastoralism and rural Australia.
Although it has been a tough slog at times, they love the life they've created and are proud of it.
History has been preserved on the homestead's walls in old photographs, maps and newspaper article clippings, as well as in the memories the Tonkins share.
"I remember droving sheep in and out on my bush bike when I was about four-years-old," Mr Tonkin said.
"I'd also run into trouble with the teacher for not being at school during shearing, they could never get us back to school whenever there was any stock work around the homestead.
"I have enjoyed handling stock my whole life, and I have enjoyed flying too.
"My father would hire in aircraft and I loved going up in the planes he hired, then he bought aircraft and would hire pilots until I was old enough to get my licence."
The Tonkin family roots can be traced back to Red Hill station near Onslow in the early 1900s.
The name Stephen has been used in the family for four generations.
In 1926, Mr Tonkin's grandparents purchased Menangina station, north east of Kalgoorlie, and they even ran sheep through the depression.
They were one of the few pastoralists to do so without a wild dog fence and controlled numbers with constant trapping.
More than four decades later, the family added on nearby Gindalbie (1970) and Mendelyarri (1978) stations.
Gindalbie was originally a town with 4000 people, which had a pub and general store, and was run by GA Cooper in the gold rush.
The Coopers started with a few cattle to supply the miners, however the town was cleared out during World War I.
Mr Tonkin left school in 1973 to return to Gindalbie for three years, before leaving again to attend the Muresk Institute.
He returned in 1978 and six years later purchased the station's 200,000 hectares and 8000 head of Merino sheep from his parents.
"It's what I always wanted to do," Mr Tonkin said.
"I was always very interested in stations."
Initial improvements were made to fencing, water points, pipelines and stock handling equipment.
The Tonkins invested most of their time into sheep breeding - particularly wool - and they were able to build a successful business.
Business aside, they enjoyed the wool side of sheep and watching the changes in their flock, as their hard work paid off.
Sheep numbers were slowly bred up from 8000 to a peak of 20,000 head.
After trialling different dates, the Tonkins settled for a September shearing to beat the blowflies.
This was done in a six-stand shearing shed and the most bales produced in a year was 500.
Wool at Gindalbie cut a 22-23 average micron and vegetable matter was "down and sound".
As there are no drastic changes in animal nutrition in pastoral areas, wool quality and staple strength is usually consistent year-on-year.
"Farming country can have green feed, then all of a sudden they might be hand feeding," Mr Tonkin said.
"Pastoral properties are running on natural feed right the way through."
Merinos have always been the breed of choice at Gindalbie, with an interest in a soft, rolling fleece.
The Tonkins recalled one year sending six bales of 17 micron wool to Newcastle's fine wool sale where it sold "very well".
"Another year, we purchased ewes mated to fat lambs - they lambed down, we fattened them up and they were sold within 60 cents of the WA record," Mr Tonkin said.
"We sold about 200-300 head of those."
Usually, ewes are sold at 6.5-year-old and wethers at five-and-a-half.
Depending on how lambing percentages shaped up, hoggets were culled so numbers could be held correctly.
For Mr Tonkin, the fact sheep offered an additional source of income was the beauty of it all.
But what he loves most about the Merino breed is - of course - the wool and the way they handle the tougher country.
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Gindalbie was turning off profitable volumes of wool and lambing percentages were strong until the early 2000s.
Wild dog numbers exploded at a phenomenal rate, one that Mr Tonkin could not even calculate.
He estimated losses were anywhere between 25 and 50 per cent each year.
They had survived the wool crisis in the 1990s, but this was a completely different ball game.
It was new territory for the Tonkins, who had only ever been hit with one or two wild dogs, which could be immediately controlled.
"I received a phone call and was asked how many sheep I was going to shear," Mr Tonkin said.
"I responded with, whatever my neighbour shore because he was ahead of me and was running the same flock size."
Mr Tonkin admits Gindalbie could have sold out of sheep as soon as the wild dogs hit, however he thought the problem could be controlled.
He didn't want to let go - there were decades of breeding, genetics, history and hard work in his flock.
"There were 15 doggers running the boundary between pastoral properties and Crown land," Mr Tonkin said.
"But those doggers were stopped and a dependence was put on aerial baiting.
"This didn't really work and as a result there was an influx, beyond what we could control."
With no doggers on the job, Mr Tonkin had no choice but to start dogging full-time in a desperate attempt to control the problem.
It didn't take long for the penny to drop - he wasn't winning, he couldn't win and he'd go broke if he continued.
Like many others in WA's pastoral regions, the last of Gindalbie's sheep were sold in 2009.
Alternative sources of income and diversification were found in contract mining, sandalwood harvesting and cattle.
While dogs aren't anywhere near as prevalent today, they do remain an issue - trapping, baiting and a dogger help reduce the impact.
What also helps with follow-on problems of attacks is cows are more maternal than sheep.
So if a calf is attacked, their mothers will keep the wound clean.
"Problems can be much worse in sheep because if the wound isn't kept clean, then the flies are attracted," Mr Tonkin said.
"So you might lose cows and calves to dogs, but you don't lose them to flies as a result of the dogs.
"Overall, the wild dogs have been a real bugger and it is really disappointing."
It wasn't a bad time for Gindalbie to move into cattle, as Indonesia's live export trade started to ramp up.
The only problem was - the Tonkins were running 300 Hereford cows and their length of hair was not desired by the market.
Herefords were referred to as 'woolly' cattle, which couldn't handle the tropics or travelling on ships.
To solve this, Droughtmaster bulls were introduced to breed out the long hair and change the animals' conformation.
Today, the white Hereford face remains prominent, however the Tonkins have achieved the other breeding traits and characteristics they were chasing.
"We have bred a sleek animal with a full, good-sized body and plenty of skin," Mr Tonkin said.
"Ultimately, you're chasing market acceptance and these animals sell quite well.
"I'd say we are probably more breeders, as opposed to sellers of fat stock."
Gindalbie supplies cattle to feedlots and farmers and smaller bulls are sent to live export.
"You have to work out how many you want to sell," he said.
"For example - you have a cow who is living well, is still breeding and knows where all the feed is, versus a young one.
"If you haven't got enough to sell the young one will go and you'll keep the old one for their knowledge."
Cattle usually graze on native vegetation on the property, including grasses, blue bush, dogwood and old mulgas.
They are trapped once a year in October-November, when conditions are dry and water points have been replenished.
When Gindalbie is light on feed, cattle are trapped quickly and fed hay and pellets.
You can't rely on rainfall when you run livestock in the outback.
For the past 15 years, Gindalbie has missed the winter rain, which the country depends on.
There are 22 dams at the station, all of which have extension tanks, and four handling yards with water yards, crushers and loading races.
Gindalbie is also on the 'gumbelt' - renowned for lack of underground water.
"We are lucky to have four good bores, three with very good water," Mr Tonkin said.
"We are able to pipe about 1000 gallons of water per hour and have 80km of pipeline running from those bores.
"They run into extension tanks, as well as dams, so if they go dry we can turn the pipeline on and keep stock out to where those dams are."
Covering the dams with pipelines means they are much more reliable than if they weren't.
All of Gindalbie's bores are in the high country, which means water is pumped to the high spot and then gravity fed across the station.
Mr Tonkin said by developing the country they have been able to increase stock numbers, watering points and fence more paddocks.
"We have done a lot of environmental work in rehydrating the country and revegetation," he said.
"And we have also done work in infrastructure, assets and low-stress stock handling."
Remote water monitoring system Farmbot was installed in three tanks on the property in 2019.
The system takes the guesswork out of measuring and analysing water.
Farmbot has made life on the land much easier for the Tonkins, as they are able to identify a problem before it worsens.
"We had a dry summer and I needed to check the bore daily because of the stock on it - meaning I couldn't leave the station," Mr Tonkin said.
"The entire time we didn't have a problem and I went out there everyday when I didn't need to.
"I thought, if I had a system like Farmbot then I could've left the station and I wouldn't have had to do the hour-round trip daily to check the tanks."
Farmbot allows Mr Tonkin to check the tanks from his phone and pick up on patterns in the bore, including when the cattle are drinking.
Beyond infrastructure, the Tonkins have diversified Gindalbie in other ways, including with sandalwood harvesting and contract mining.
Mr Tonkin's father disliked sandalwood and was able to stop it from being harvested on the station.
However, in the late 1990s-early 2000s when he left Gindalbie, the Forest Products Commission approached Mr Tonkin and said legally it could not be stopped.
"They said it wasn't our right to stop it and sandalwooding was going to happen with or without our permission," Mr Tonkin said.
"We only owned the grazing rights of the station.
"At that stage I said, if someone was going to harvest the sandalwood it may as well be us and we went up for tender.
"We couldn't beat them, so we joined them."
The Tonkins started out with smaller harvests, but then made contracts larger when they transitioned out of sheep.
They also own a sheep farm at Toodyay, which they have leased out for about 20 years.
