The Rutledge family have created a haven of hospitality on Moble station near Quilpie in Queensland’s channel country.
For a family who’s kept a station diary every day for the past 100 years, it’s a bit surprising that there’s some contention over the installation of billabong that gives the homestead at Moble station its ‘sea’ breezes and water views. In Meg Rutledge’s version of events, it was a wedding gift from her grandfather for her parents, Brian and Kylie, when they married in 1985. Brian’s recollection is more pragmatic: yes, the diversion of Moble Creek was created at that time, but not so much as a gift, more as a sign of his father’s constant attention to water supply on the 120,000-acre (48,562ha) property in the Quilpie district of south-western Queensland. “Water is a precious resource out here,” Brian says. “We’ve always been very careful how we manage it.” As Meg’s husband, Lachlan ‘Lachie’ Dean explains, Moble is on “marginal grazing land” in the bioregion known as the Channel Country on the edge of the more arid land bordering the Corner Country of north-western NSW, far western Queensland South Australia’s far north east.
The Rutledge family has traditionally raised Merino sheep and Shorthorn/Santa Gertrudis cross cattle, but more recently they’ve added rangeland goats to their portfolio as goats browse on the mulga trees and don’t compete with the other livestock for grass. Meg and Lachie’s children, Frank, who is almost two, and his little brother, who will be born at the end of 2024, represent the fifth generation of Rutledges to live on Moble. Meg’s great-great grandfather, Frank bought Wambin, the place next door in 1914, just as he waved his three sons off to the First World War. Tragically, the middle son didn’t make it home, as he was killed in the Middle East. In an intriguing footnote to this part of history, alongside the family diaries, the Rutledges have a framed Reuters telegram announcing the armistice and a room key that their forebears souvenired from the hotel where they were staying in Cairo, Egypt. Moble’s non Indigenous history goes back to the early European settlement of the region as American surveyor Thomas Underwood, who had come to Australia after the Civil War, travelled through in 1867 naming Moble Creek for Moble in Alabama.
This was just six years after explorers Burke and Wills made their ill fated journey crossing Australia from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria and perished in the desert on their return journey in 1861. Two years after Underwood, pioneering pastoralist Patrick Durack and his in laws, the Costellos camped on Moble Creek for nine months, while they sent a team down the Strzelecki Track to Adelaide to sell spare horses. They established Thylungra and Kyabra stations as well as properties around Adavale, Thargomindah, Windorah and Roma before before heading 4,800 kilometres north-west in the 1880s to establish their ‘grass castles’ in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. When the Rutledges bought Moble station in 1923, Brian’s grandfather (also Brian) moved there with his bride, Mary Borthwick, who grew up on the adjacent Whynot station. They lived in the homestead where Meg, Lachie and Frank now live, while Brian grew up in a homestead on the other side of the billabong, where he and Kylie now live. Until the early 2000s date ???, the Rutledges were in the fortunate position of having relatives as neighbours on either side.
Kylie, who grew up in Brisbane, came to the district as a governess to Brian’s cousin’s family on Wambin. “It was meant to be six months off before I went to uni to do ag science,” she says. “But I met Brian and never made it back to Brisbane.” Instead, Brian and Kylie raised four daughters and Kylie and the occasional governess, sometimes assisted by visiting VICE (Voluntary Isolated Children’s Education) teachers, supervised their primary school education until they went to boarding school. Clearly it was a good start in life for the Rutledge sisters as Felicity is a vet living in London, Sarah, who now lives in Toowoomba after five years in the US, works for JBS Foods, marketing Australian meat to America, and Betsy is a solicitor in Brisbane. Meg, who holds a Bachelor of Business and Agriculture, worked in the NT after school, and for AACo, which owns and operates Australia’s largest beef herd, after graduation, and became the pastoral giant’s livestock manager, before she headed overseas for two years. “I worked for Hello Fresh in London during its start-up period,” she says. “Our whole family is keen on cooking, so it was a great fit. In between work I was able to backpack around Europe, which was also great experience. For I while I lived with a family in southern Spain.
They hosted guests, which gave me the idea of doing something similar at Moble when I came home.” Meg moved back to the bush in 2017 to help on the station. She met Lachie, who was working on Herbertvale in Queensland’s remote Gulf country at a race meeting in Longreach. They conducted a long-distance relationship until he moved down to Quilpie three years ago and they were married. Lachie has a strong creative bent and there’s evidence of his handiwork in the kitchen stools he made with seats fashioned from cross-sections of repurposed cattle-yard timber as well as other functional and decorative pieces throughout the house and garden. “We’re a family of entertainers and we always had guests,” Meg says. “It just made sense to extend that hospitality to paying visitors. Wool was traditionally our income mainstay [a ribbon for fleece of the highest commercial value from the recent Quilpie show proves their sheep can still hold their own in this arena] but we needed to diversify into something that’s less dependent on the seasons.”
The Rutledges have converted an outbuilding that had served as the children’s schoolroom and a two-bedroom cottage that once was jackaroo quarters for guest accommodation. Kylie also built a strawbale guestroom in the homestead’s beautiful gardens to add another bedroom, and all three options have rustic outdoor bathing facilities. The entire family pools their skills to offer guest entertainment, which often includes bushwalks lead by Kylie on trails that showcase the natural environment. Guests might finish a walk by collecting wildflowers to make an arrangement or tussie mussie for the bedside table. Another offering is an en plein air painting workshop conducted by local artist Lyn Barnes. Brian also has considerable metalwork skills and shares his knowledge with vistors who book in for regular two-day workshops where they learn to weld and bend metal to build their own works ranging from gates and fences to furniture and sculpture. “Quilpie has an amazing artistic community,” Kylie says. “I think there’s something about the isolation that everyone feels they can explore their creativity without being judged.
It’s wonderful how painting the landscape opens people’s eyes to what’s around them. That’s also why I always guide our guests on the walks. By pointing out features and sharing our story, I feel I’m helping to bring the landscape alive.” Camping is another way of introducing guests to the Rutledges’ world and they have established a permanent site with a hot shower and a flushing toilet, so visitors can experience sleeping under the stars in swags in style. “We’ve always been a family of campers,” Meg says. “Dad would literally take the kitchen sink and Mum always packed a tablecloth, so our style of camping is not without creature comfort.” With soon-to-be two little ones to care for, Meg has currently scaled down their hospitality offerings, though they plan to be back in full swing for the tourist season – Easter to October – of 2026. “It’s wonderful to see how much people gain from station visits,” she says. “You can drive past and think there’s not much to see, but if you just slow down and take in the landscape, it reveals itself in remarkable ways. We’re lucky enough to enjoy those experiences every day, so we love sharing them.”
