Between Two Worlds
Shae and Tess Ford walk behind a mob of breeders at Fossil Down Station, Kimberley WA.
The Ford Sisters split their time between the Kimberley and boarding schools around the country.Words: Alice MoffittPhotography: Stacey FordIt’s winter school holidays at Fossil Downs Station, and all four Ford sisters are helping out in the cattle yards. There’s a mob of weaners to be branded and the stock camp needs some extra hands.
Tess is keeping the race full and banging tails, while eldest Pippa works the crush and administers pain relief. When there’s work to be done, the girls are focused, obviously capable, and slot right in with the rest of the crew. But when it’s time for smoko, they're a whir of bubbly chatter and sisterly banter. They’ve flown thousands of kilometres from boarding school to spend a few weeks at home, but they don’t mind being put to work - as long as they’re together.
“We were always together growing up,” says Pippa.”We’re all very close now as teenagers and still really want to be involved in each others’ lives.
“The first thing we do when we get home is visit all the animals, especially Dolly the donkey, then go for a long bareback walk on our horses and just talk the whole time. Even though we stay in touch all the time when we’re away at school, it’s not the same.”
Home for Pippa and her sisters Shae, Tess and Tia (aged 19,17, 15 and 13) is a 400,000-hectare cattle station in the West Kimberley region of WA. Their parents Rick and Stacey have managed Fossil Downs for the last seven years and coupled with previous station management roles, their daughters have only ever known the red dirt, big skies and unbridled freedom that comes from growing up in the bush.
“We’ve been so lucky to live in really beautiful places,” Stacey says. “The girls didn’t have screens or phones until they went away boarding and we rarely turned the TV on.
“Rick and I encouraged them to get outside and use their imagination. The ranges here are full of fossils, caves and creeks and they were such little explorers. They’d be gone for hours, bareback on their horses, and come home with a different yarn every night. We knew they’d be safe - well, relatively anyway - out in this amazing, big backyard.”
Daily life looks a little different for the girls now, and although the decision to send bush kids away to boarding school is often unavoidable and fraught with complexities - for the Fords, it was also logistically complex. The two middle girls Shae, and Tess make an incredible 4,500 km journey to boarding school at The Armidale School in New South Wales - chosen for its agriculture and equine programs. Their all-day commute involves the four-and-a-half hour car trip to Broome (sometimes a lift in a helicopter to cross a flooded river during the wet season), followed by three flights.
Rick and Stacey chose Perth Ladies College for Pippa, who’s on a gap year after graduating in 2021 and Tia who’s in year 7. It’s the ‘easy’ trip, with just a single flight from Broome allowing them to return home for mid-term breaks. Warmer weather and a change in scenery mark their arrival home. The last 10 kilometres of red dirt driveway are flanked by flat plains dotted with boab trees and rocky outcrops in the distance.
People were making the journey to Fossil Downs long before the Ford girls. It was the final destination for Australia’s longest-ever cattle drove. The pioneering McDonald brothers entrenched the station in Australia’s pastoral history when they made the ambitious 5600-kilometre trek north from Goulburn, NSW in 1883 with 1,000 head of cattle and 100 horses.
Sisters Tia, Shae, Pippa and Tess Ford slot straight into the stock camp during the school holidays.
Shae says the girls’ unique upbringing and epic commute is a source of intrigue to their school community in the NSW Northern Tablelands. “People have no idea what we’re talking about when we say we grew up on a million-acre property that takes four hours to drive across and carries 25,000 head,” she says. “Some people have no idea where the beef on their dinner plate comes from.”
Their early schooling years also looked different from most. Primary school and the first years of high school were done via School of the Air from their station classroom with either Stacey or a governess watching over their lessons. Stacey was initially concerned. “I really felt the burden of not stuffing-up their education. I felt we were compromising,” she reveals. “But, now my view has completely changed. School of the Air is an advantage because you can analyse each kid’s learning style and adjust your teaching to suit.”
In those early days, school began around 6:30am, and finished as soon as the work was done. That’s if the girls weren’t lured outside earlier – alerted by the crackle of the station two-way radio to something happening in a far-away paddock. By lunchtime, they were saddling their horses ready for an afternoon ride. “We were a bit wild as kids,” Pippa says, remembering that feeling of acute loss when her freedom was suddenly curtailed. “Aside from my sisters, I missed the ability to be outside when I went to boarding school. Being in a classroom where you had to sit all day was really hard.”
The three older girls started boarding in years 9 and 10 – Tia slightly earlier, in year 7 on an academic scholarship – and Pippa thinks they were well-equipped to deal with the transition. “Waiting those extra couple of years made it a lot better,” she explains. “By that point in your teens you’re kind of like, I love my family but I need some of my own time and my own friends. The only other kids in the area our age were our sisters.”
Shae loved that she was able to take her horse with her to school in Armidale, but says she struggled more with the change in social dynamics. “I think we were a bit more mature than other kids because we were constantly around the other station staff,” she says. “So to go to a classroom with 30 other kids and 100 people in your year and figure out how other kids your own age do things was a big transition.”
This is the first year Rick and Stacey haven’t had any of their girls home year-round, and Stacey has felt the loss. “Last year, through Covid, they all ended up back here in the schoolroom again,” she says. “Their teachers said they adjusted better to it than anyone though.”
“It was crazy busy doing it myself in those early years but now it’s just so quiet. It’s been quite the weaning process for me. There’s just something about having kids around on a station - running through the door, jumping on the trampoline or me yelling because one of their ponies is running across the homestead lawn. All the usual chaos that comes with kids,” Stacey laughs.
She needn’t have been worried about her girls’ unique upbringing and education. All four flourished during School of the Air and boarding school, proving their capacity to learn and have big dreams hasn’t been hobbled. Although year 10 student Tess loves her horses and misses the freedom of station life when at school, her early years exploring on Fossil Downs have instilled in her a sense of adventure. “I can’t wait to go travelling overseas when I finish school,” she says. “Tia will definitely go to university though. She’s really clever and loves science. She wants to be an astrophysicist at the moment. I think all of us will end up in agriculture eventually though, it’s embedded in us.”
Alice Moffitt is a writer and sheep farmer who lives at Kameruka, NSW. Learn more at alicemoffitt.com. Stacey Ford is a photographer and pastoralist from the Kimberley region of WA. Find her on Instagram @staceyfordphotography