WOMEN of the LAND

Keelen MAILMAN

FOR LOVE AND COUNTRY

Keelen Mailman sits on her veranda, watching the sun set behind the vast plains and rocky outcrops of Mount Tabor Station, or Goorathuntha in the local Bidjara language that her mum treasured and taught her. “I love the late afternoons,” she says with that deep, warm, Queensland accent. “The sun’s not as harsh, you’ve got through your hard day, you’re coming towards the dark and you just sit out on the veranda having a cuppa and a smoke and a wind-down, thinking about your kids [she has three] and your grannies [her seven grandchildren] and your work. That’s my time that I really love.”

Keelen’s family has cared for this land for generations, and for the past 24 years, it’s been her turn. As a single mother, at just 30, she became the first Aboriginal woman to manage a commercial cattle station when she was employed first by the Indigenous Land Corporation and then by the local Goorathuntha Traditional Owners, once she’d secured the title to their land.

Those early days, out here on 90,000 hectares in outback