Cattle Industry
Beef cattle farming on natural rangelands is carried out widely across the Northern Territory. Groundwater is the main water source and it enables production in areas where surface water is normally scarce.
A typical cattle station in the Barkly Tablelands or the Victoria River District covers an area of about 3000 square kilometres, carries 20,000 head and has up to thirty bores.
The bores are spaced about 10 kilometres apart and on average pump at a rate of 2 litres per second. Windmills have mostly been replaced by small diesel powered engines.
The water is pumped out of the ground into above ground tanks or dams where it is gravity fed to one or more drinking troughs.
Refueling a bore engine on Cattle Creek Station
