When plans for a gap year overseas turned sour during the pandemic in 2021, Jaz Stewart found herself driving across Australia to a cattle station kitchen.
At 19 years old, her cooking experience was limited at best, her exposure to cattle even more so, but on a whim she said yes to the role of station cook.
“My dad always joked that I didn’t know how to make toast, which probably wasn’t far from the truth,” Ms Stewart said.
Nevertheless, she packed her car and drove 4,500 kilometres from her family home in Moree, New South Wales to Halls Creek in Western Australia’s remote East Kimberley.
Flora Valley Station is a three hour drive from Halls Creek, along a dirt road. (Supplied: Jasmine Stewart)
Learning to be a station cook
Flora Valley Station was where she pulled up, at a small-yet-practical kitchen and the suggestion of a stew to feed the crew of 15 hungry station workers.
“I was googling ‘how do you make a stew?’ and ‘what goes into a stew?'” Ms Stewart said.
“Anyway I made it. I don’t know if I’d ever eat it again but we ate it.”
Cattle are mustered into the yards by ringers at Flora Valley Station. (Supplied: Jasmine Stewart)
Ms Stewart found herself in a whole new world, one where she not only had to learn to be a cook, but also to be a butcher.
“Some days there would be a killer [a whole carcass] hanging up in the cool room that needed to be cut up,” she said.
As someone who had only ever considered beef in the context of a supermarket, she was overwhelmed by the task.
“All of a sudden I had this whole chunk of meat and I was like, is this steak or mince? What do I actually do with this?”
While helping out with drafting at the cattle yards Ms Stewart began taking photos of her experiences. (Supplied: Jasmine Stewart)
Life on a remote station
Ms Stewart began to find her feet over time and learnt to love the routine of station life, beginning in the kitchen at 5am and clocking off after dinner.
As she got the cooking side of things down pat, she began to spend more time in the cattle yards.
“Gary the manager was very good at the start and he said, ‘If you’re in this kitchen every day you’ll go mad’, so he used to take me down to the yards,” Ms Stewart said.
“It’s there I learned a lot about the cattle handling side of things.”
Ms Stewart’s role as a station cook soon began to take her away from the camp kitchen and into the rodeo world. (Supplied: Jasmine Stewart)
But it was at the local Halls Creek campdraft she really found her passion.
The sport, popular in rural communities across Australia, involves men and women on horses chasing cattle around a scored course.
“[My managers] came home from the local campdraft and rodeo association’s [annual general meeting] and told me they’d put me down as assistant secretary,” Ms Stewart said.
“I looked at them and asked, ‘What’s a campdraft?'”
Ms Stewart found she loved helping to organise things at her local campdraft and rodeo. (Supplied: Jasmine Stewart)
She soon found out; and enjoyed being behind the scenes running the important social event in the remote region.
“I loved it. It kept me coming back year after year,” she said.
Opportunity presents itself
What started as a plan to work on Flora Valley Station for one dry season quickly turned into four years.
“I just never left. The people made the Kimberley home for me,” Ms Stewart said.
Ringers in the yards at Flora Valley Station. (Supplied: Jasmine Stewart)
As she was finally coming around to the idea of returning to New South Wales, Ms Stewart saw an opportunity to progress within the company that owns Flora Valley Station.
“I’ve just taken on the supporting manager role at Pigeon Hole Station in the NT,” she said.
“It’s a big step to go from station cook to manager’s support, but I’m excited.
“I came up here and just gave it everything, took every moment and had a ball.”
A truckload of cattle roll out of Flora Valley Station. (Supplied: Jasmine Stewart)
And her advice to anyone considering a job in Australia’s remote north is just that: “Have confidence in yourself to say, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it’.”
