As a total performance Kimberley rodeos have a recognisable, often repeated structure. All events take place within a single open ring around which yards and chutes holding stock are located. Opening events usually involve all or some of team roping, rope and tie, steer wrestling, campdraft and barrel racing events, after which come the roughstock events. The early events have a mixture of women and men competing whereas the roughtstock events are almost completely devoid of women competitors. Another distinction between the two groups of events lies in the preparation of the stock and contestants. In the non-roughstock events the stock are usually held in an open yard separated from the rodeo ring by a gate around which contestants, friends and assistants assemble to prepare. From this yard, out into the rodeo ring, come the calves and steers for roping and campdraft as well the riders and their horses that chase them. The preparation of contestants and release of stock are different in the roughstock events. After departing from family and friends around the rodeo ring the usually male contestants gather in a secluded area adjacent to the rodeo ring where they put on their contest apparel: chaps, padded vest, riding boots, gloves, etc. While they are visible through the surrounding fence, theirs is a public seclusion and noticeably fewer friends gather round them than the non-roughstock events. When their ride comes near, they move over to the chute area where their ride will be guided into a small area barely larger than animal itself. After they lower themselves on to the back of the animal, secure themselves to the rope that is wrapped around the bovine or horse, the chute gate is opened and within specific rules about body placement and self-support, they have to stay on for eight seconds, after which they will receive a score and relative ranking.

Kimberley rodeos are complex social events in terms of prestige, gender and race relations. They create a social space in which people involved in the commercial cattle industry come together and socialise on the basis of their shared cattle-based activities. Managers, stockhands and their families mingle together in the public space around the rodeo yards and those Aboriginal people who have come into the rodeo off the stations set up camp around the perimeter of the rodeo ring on the basis of family affiliation. These are independent groupings, and stockhands may or may not have a separate camp to their manager, moving between groupings as it suits them. As people move around the ring, conversations are struck up between people who may not have seen and talked to each other for months or years. Race rarely informs the overt structure or content of these interactions, mirroring the ideal of competitive egalitarianism informing the rodeo events. Rather, status is determined through the prestige achieved in contesting rodeo events as well as being determined by the success of a station in achieving monetary profit, independent of government intervention, through successful grazing, stock-handling, labour recruitment, infrastructure maintenance and other aspects of station management. Aboriginal-owned stations have historically been less likely to have achieved this position, and it is usually those families which are associated with commercially viable stations that involve themselves in the attendance and organisation of rodeos. Men who attend rodeos and work on a station that is in severe financial difficulties can avoid the implied detrimental status implications by emphasising the quality of their technical work on the stations^[21] as well as their rodeo prowess, both of which are interconnected. These are matters between men as stock workers and managers on Aboriginal cattle station are always male, women are rarely afforded the opportunity to acquire the skills to negotiate such technicalities. The exclusive gendering of the Aboriginal station workforce is not as common in non-Aboriginal stations, but they nevertheless employ far greater numbers of men than women. Some of this gender exclusivity and status achievement is evident in the rodeo events themselves. Apart from those events in which young children compete, adult events are usually defined by their gender inclusiveness or exclusivity. The prestige of an event can be gleaned by reference to the amount of prize money attached to it, the size and ostentatiousness of the buckle and trophy that goes with the prize money and the corresponding levels of personal danger that each event poses to a contestant. Men and women compete in roping, bulldogging and barrel-racing events, which are regarded as involving a low degree of risk, whereas the roughstock events – bronc and bovine (steer, bullock and bull respectively) rides – are almost always contested by men. The men-only events carry the highest cash prizes and the largest trophies and buckles, the latter worn with great pride whenever possible.

In Kimberley rodeos most of the contestants are directly involved in Kimberley located cattle stations. Few contestants are permanent or semi-professional rodeo competitors, contributing to the localism of Kimberley rodeos. The prestige gained in these events circulates around the cattle community, generating a rodeo history that is rarely touched by outsider interventions. While Aboriginal people have been present as audience and as event contestants for as long as rodeo has been performed in the Kimberley, their ownership of stations is a relatively recent affair. Since the mid-1970s various Commonwealth government departments (Department of Aboriginal Affairs, the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission [ALFC], and Indigenous Land Fund) have purchased pastoral leases on behalf of Kimberley Aborigines. In each of the Aboriginal leases the reaction to their acquisition has differed with some caring little for the cattle they have obtained and others regarding the cattle as an opportunity to establish commercial cattle operations for their own benefit. Those leases where a congruence of good quality land, desire by traditional landowners and capacity to run a business exists, structure their stations in a similar manner to non-Aboriginal Kimberley stations. Historically, Kimberley stations have been owned by absentee landlords, companies or the more common resident owner-managers. In some stations the management team is a family where decision-making powers rest with the male manager and his wife, a continuation of pre-transfer station management styles.^[22] In this centralised management system the manager, sometimes called ‘boss’, takes operational responsibility for the herding of cattle and establishes himself and his family in a homestead around which mechanical workshops, plant machines and stockhand quarters are located. On those stations where the manager makes his decisions after discussion with a group of experienced Aboriginal stockmen and landowners, he is still accorded high status as manager and is credited with responsibility for making sure the decisions are carried out effectively. All cattle handlers on stations are men and their preponderance in the industry is reflected in roughstock events where it is rare for more than a single woman to compete amongst up to forty competitors. The economic returns to managers and stockhands are typically low, but the high social status and corresponding levels of self-worth are often cited by both as compensating for a meagre pay packet. Cattle movement is controlled by the use of water points, paddocks and stockyards. The life-production cycle of a commercial bovine, in station terms, ends in the stockyard, no matter their age or sex. They are primarily reared for their commercial potential and their exit from a station almost always occurs on the back of a cattle truck as it speeds away from a stockyard from which it has just picked up its livestock load. The only other use for cattle is as meat for the station and Aboriginal communities that are established nearby or on the leases.