Pastoral families have shown enormous resilience in the face of daunting obstacles - drought, fire, flood, plagues of kangaroos and markets that always work in someone else's interests.
Pastoral companies still occupy much of the remote west, but the family holding predominates.
It is possible that this phase of human occupation is coming to an end. I sense that the confidence of grazier families is crumbling as new challenges pile on top of the traditional ones.
Twenty years ago, geographer Professor John Holmes predicted the value of outback properties for mining, tourism and conservation would outweigh their value for pastoralism as profitability became squeezed by market forces.
To this suite of competing land uses must now be added carbon marketeering. Broadacre properties will need to carry a heavy burden of emissions reduction because of the national government's failure to establish any policy framework for limiting emissions in other sectors such as electricity and transport.
This added complication for rural communities is imposed not by green activists, but by anti-environmental carbon denialists.
I am told that one million acres in the Wyandra district is under purchase for the sake of its carbon credits. The consequences of taking properties out of traditional pastoral production can be devastating for the local townships as population drifts away.
There is a possible solution but it would require a radical shift in the way we administer our rangelands. Suppose that the state purchases properties (at full market prices) when their landholders are ready to leave.
The properties could then be maintained by career station managers, giving the sons and daughters of pastoralists career pathways enjoying steady income, without the ever-present fear of financial failure.
Grazing could then be managed by droving stock to agistment from district to district - along reopened stock routes - following the rains, just as the large corporates do now with their dispersed holdings.
To adopt a nomadic method of husbanding livestock is to revert to the way that humans have managed low-productivity pastures since time immemorial.
Our present reliance on market forces segregates graziers into winners or losers. In human history it is a recent development.
Pastoralism doesn't have to be as cruel as it is now.
- Dr Geoff Edwards, Royal Society of Queensland president. Views are his own.
