HISTORY OF LORELLA SPRINGS STATION 


Lorella Springs was once a part of Nathan River Station and called Albinjula, which means "Valley of Springs". In 1969 the Lands Department divided Nathan River station and the new half became known as Rosie Creek. I don't know how "they or who" came up with the name Lorella Springs station out of Rosie Creek but "they" did. 

Our family moved from Nathan River Station to Lorella on Boxing Day in 1987. We had owned Nathan River Station, but a cyclone had devastated the property and put us 6 weeks behind with the mortgage payment. A disgustingly harsh bank froze all our money, assets and income. We had virtually lost everything and Nathan River station had been sold up from under us. We had no where else to go. 

That fateful night our home was under the stars, we had no shelter and all that we owned had been dumped in the bush beside our old Toyota. There were eight of us and our dogs. Rhett is my eldest child, he was 17 years old at the time. Lara was 15,  Shanie 14, and our Rachael was 9. The little boys Lucas 4, Tarran 3 and my baby Jennes, was almost 2 years old. The Wet broke that night. We had tried to huddle in the back of the vehicle out of the torrential rain. It was a pretty miserable night.

The new day brought hope from despair as we took stock of our surroundings and looked to see what we could use to erect a shelter. We made our home from some ropes strung between two trees and a truck tarpaulin to form a tent like roof. Our walls were panels of portable cattle yards to keep out the wild bulls and buffalo. We lived there quite happily through the Wet and some of the mental scars from losing Nathan River station began to heal. 

In April, through a deal with the previous owners, my ex husband had secured Lorella Springs Station for the family, and the children and myself moved into the old homestead.

We became known through the bush telegraph as Nancy Walker, "the crazy woman who lived in the bush at Lorella with her seven kids". It was the fact that we wouldn't give up and leave that shook them. Others before us had been broken by this land and had left. Some of the locals didn't like us because they couldn't break us and in a grudging way they respected this dogged determination that we had. 

By necessity, when we first moved to the Station, we lived mainly off the land. Lorella was so special to us that we have fought tooth and nail to hold on to it and endured many, many hardships just to stay there and keep it in the family. We have been through such hard times together that we see ourselves as a part of this proud and unpredictable land. It has moulded us and looked after us and even turned against us making us leave. 

That was the ultimate sacrifice for our family and I didn't think I could survive it. It forced us to make a life without it to find what we each wanted. You can only discover what you want when you are allowed to be free to do so. The children grew up and survived in a different world to the Land, they had to and so did I, yet our hearts always wanted to go back. We had to find what we wanted in life, and the Land knew this, that's why it made us go.

Yet our family managed to still hold on to the station, even though it had become impossible to move back there to live until now. Home is where the heart is and in the end you must follow your heart back to the source. Because our heart link is "the Land" it tested each one of us to see who would come back.