The land itself features significantly in pastoral history. The focus however, is not the land itself, but the evolution of pastoral society and landscapes. In this development, the bodily aspects of memory take on significance as the pastoral body and land permeate each other through physical presence, observation and labour.

In a complex and arid biophysical environment that is highly variable in time and space^[38] and greatly variable in its ability to support stock, pastoralists require a good knowledge of their land. For example, to control their herds, particularly prior to widespread fencing and establishment of sub-artesian bores, pastoralists needed considerable knowledge of the limited natural waters and of where cattle were likely to congregate. In many cases, pastoralists were often dependent on local Aboriginal people in these regards, at least initially, although this is not generally evident in these pastoral histories.

Pastoralists gain this knowledge through work and experience. They come to gain not only knowledge of the physical features and layout of the land, but also to develop a way of knowing it that provides them a place within it. This knowing is specific to their mode of land use and occupation, and arises in part from the variability of the land.

The Chalmers, Price and Nicker families all had sheep. Whereas cattle can be largely left to their own devices much of the time, sheep required shepherding. For this reason, they had largely disappeared from the area by the 1960s. Shepherding sheep forced the Chalmers to engage in some desperate searches for water that almost cost the lives of family members. New to Central Australia and to arid zone pastoralism, the Chalmers were reassured by rainfall records that indicated regular summer rainfall and by assurances from ‘old timers in the district, that in at least twenty years of history there had never failed to be a rain before Christmas’.^[39] They did not realise that twenty years is inadequate in assessing the highly variable rainfall pattern of Central Australia. According to Ford,^[40] in 1926 they and their stock were forced to their limits when summer rains failed to materialise. Ford paints a picture of despair as the previously welcoming land dries out and stock begin to die and as hopes for the future turn to dust.

From such disasters, however, is forged the mythic stoicism of the outback. In outback mythology, the outcomes generally remain at the level of rather vague admiration and worthy stoicism, the value of which is taken to be self-evident. More detail, however, is required to tease out the specific resonances of such elements of frontier mythology today. In the Chalmers case, rain finally came in March, when the country flooded and brought forth an ‘unbelievable carpet of vitality and fertility’ where stock had been dying their thousands.^[41] The Chalmers sheep flourished and the region ‘had become a land flowing with milk and honey, and the pastoral scene breathed serenity, prosperity and contentment’ as ‘once again the remarkable recuperative powers of the country had been proved’^[42] . This experience provided the Chalmers with a steep learning curve about Central Australia, but it also had a more significant effect. As noted above, Ford is evidently told of another observation, that the country can recuperate and bloom, when it is apparently ruined, and the pastoralists labour and commitment destroyed with it. From this perspective, for those who are there to see it, the country shows its true nature, its true productivity. This is a productivity that is felt or known for those who have seen the cycles and seen their families and stations survive; there to see for those who wait, for those who persist and place their faith in the land.

In pastoral historical memory, experiences such as the Chalmers etch the families into the land. They carve out a place for themselves through suffering, and in turn the experience is carried by them and their heirs. In pastoral culture, those who pass through such events in Central Australia embody the events and carry them within their person. Indeed, among pastoralists the shared embodiment of these experiences is an important part of collective identity and memory, marking them off from others whom they assume to have no understanding of Central Australia due to lack of presence. It is a culture of faith that persists strongly to this day. This was exemplified by pastoralist Bernie Kilgariff’s assertion to a 1996 Landcare meeting that ‘we [pastoralists] know the good of Central Australia’. The ‘good’ appeals to shared understandings and meanings about the nature of the land between pastoralists and to the value of their occupation of it. It is a singular ‘good’, one that has meaning only within the context of pastoralism, yet which underpins a presumption in favour of a universal pastoral landscape. It is a concept that is perhaps nostalgic in form, but it is central to the fabric and maintenance of the pastoral landscape for it expresses both a domestication of the land according to powerful notions of landscape progression^[43] and reciprocity between land and pastoralist.

Knowing the land also develops through labour. In pastoral culture, the labour on a station creates a geography that is an amalgam of the land and of those who labour; a geography of work that is specific to those who created it. A great familiarity is generated in the course of developing and working a station, and this is portrayed in the pastoralist histories. In her autobiographical account of establishing a station in the Tanami Desert, Marie Mahood,^[44] describes her husband’s labours. In setting up the station, Joe Mahood travels continuously over its 1620 square kilometres, determining the best locations for the bores, yards and other facilities. Successfully determining the best location of such infrastructure required observation of pasture and water resources, and their relationship to landforms and routes around the station. In concert with these tasks is a sense of how the station is to function as a whole. The station is the outcome of the merging of the physical makeup of the land, and of the pastoral ideals and plans that are both imposed upon the land and shaped by the encounter with it. In the process the land is marked by the pastoralists’ efforts, and, while in cattle culture land retains its enormity and separateness from the human realm, it is nonetheless transformed to a personalised and pastoral landscape. Due to the effort involved in starting the station, Mongrel Downs became a home for the Mahoods ‘as no other place had ever been because the challenges and responsibilities were so much greater’.^[45] Knowledge of the land is also knowledge of oneself.

The relationship of the pastoral families with the land is not only one of inscription of themselves and of meaning onto the land. In the pastoral histories, the land also shapes and works it way into the pastoralists, shaping their bodies, actions and ways of thinking. For example, Joe Mahood gave ‘eight years of his life to establishing Mongrel Downs’ and Rosemary Coppock, recalling her days on a station she and her husband began, writes of how they ‘used up muscle, sweat and tears’.^[46] Pastoralists are portrayed as giving themselves to the land and to an unspecified higher goal. In these histories, this is a selfless process of forging a landscape for the social good, not the realisation of personal ambitions. Why this might be a worthy activity is not asked; the teleology of landscape is assumed in pastoral culture.

The permeability of land and people that underlies much of these pastoral accounts is a central part of the pastoral relationship to land. This relationship is founded on establishing presence in the landscape through work or observation. This is a presence defined as much by the presence of the land within pastoralists as the presence of the pastoralist in the land. This presence is articulated through remembering such that memory is at once histories and geographies of self, family and pastoral community. Memory and landscape constitute each other and the remembered self is present at all times. Indeed without the remembered self, or the presence of those pastoralists who have succeeded and built upon previous labour, there is no meaning in the land. Such are the silent foundations of present day pastoralist objections to transfer of pastoral land to Aboriginal landowners or national parks.