Improvements
Each station has a homestead where the manager or property owner lives. Nearby cottages or staff quarters provide housing for the employees, storage sheds and cattle yards are also sited here. Other structures depend on the size and location of the station. The isolated stations will have a mechanic's workshop, schoolroom, a small general store to supply essentials and possibly an entertainment or bar area for the owners and staff. Water may be supplied from a river, bores or dams in conjunction with rainwater tanks. Electricity is nowadays typically provided with a generator if rural power is not connected, but solar electricity systems have become increasingly common.
Children were originally educated by correspondence lessons supervised by a governess and by the School of the Air, with most children in remote areas going to boarding school for their secondary education. The Royal Flying Doctor service is available to most northern and western remote stations.
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“A country whose buildings are of wood, can never increase in its improvements to any considerable degree.... Whereas when buildings are of durable materials, every new edifice is an actual and permanent acquisition to the state, adding to its value as well as to its ornament.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... these great improvements of modern times are blessings or curses on us, just in the same ratio as the mental, moral, and religious rule over the animal; or the animal propensities of our nature predominate over the intellectual and moral. The spider elaborates poison from the same flower, in which the bee finds materials out of which she manufactures honey.”
—Harriot K. Hunt (1805–1875)