The property, ranging over the traditional lands of the
Wambaya people, was sold by Messrs Kilgour and Woodhouse to Walter Douglas in 1881 for the sum of £4,000. At this time the property occupied an area of . Douglas then sold it in 1883 for the sum of £10,000 to Messrs McDonald, Smith and
Macansh.
Harry Readford, the
cattle duffer and
drover upon whose exploits the character
Captain Starlight was based, drove the first mob of cattle to Brunette Downs overland from
Queensland. He moved one mob of 120 mixed cattle down along the
Playford River in 1884, just in time for some good rains to fill the lakes and waterholes. He remained at Brunette for several years as manager, then left in the late 1880s to establish Corella Downs station. In 1887 the station manager was John Roberts, who sent 1,200 bullocks to market in April of that year. A murder occurred at the station on
New Year's Eve in 1888 when an
Indigenous Australian man named Caliph stabbed a
stockman named Robert Hamilton to death in a hut on the property. Another man named Samuel Muggleton found Hamilton's body, then the badly injured Caliph, who claimed that Hamilton had kicked him in the back so he had stabbed him. John Roberts was informed, and held an inquiry, but Caliph succumbed to his wounds and died the following day. Flooding occurred in 1891 when the rivers rose and washed away outlying huts from both Brunette Downs and Corella Downs station. More severe flooding occurred in the area about the station during the monsoon of 1895. Brunette Downs received of rain in January 1895 followed by another in February . The station sank its first sub-artesian
bore in 1903, and had 180 bores pumping water up from by 2010. Water is pumped into over 200 ponds and 400 troughs to keep the stock well watered. Sub-aretesian bores and other improvements advertised to be worth £45,000 as well as working plant were included in the sale. No bids were received, and the property was passed in. At the same time, two neighbouring properties,
Walhallow and Eva Downs, were also put up for auction. The James white family from Muswellbrook bought Brunette Downs in 1919. By 1923 the size of the property was estimated at and was one of the larger runs in the
Northern Territory, although less than half the size of
Victoria River Downs, which occupied . Dr
Rudolf Asmis, Nazi Germany's Consul General to Australia, visited Brunette Downs for three days in 1935 while travelling to Darwin. Following drought in 1952, cattle from the station were
overlanded to
Mount Isa for
agistment in Blackall-Longreach country. More than 6,000 cattle would take the walk that took several weeks through dry country.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, visited the station in 1956 on his way to the
Olympic Games in
Melbourne. Flying from
Darwin, the Prince spent the morning with
Paul Hasluck and Mr. E. Barnes (the station manager) in watching
stockmen work. He then flew onward to
Tennant Creek and
Alice Springs for the night. In early 1958 following
drought conditions some 25,000 head of cattle perished from a lack of water. The property was bought from the James White family by a
Texan-Australian venture, the
King Ranch Pastoral Company, in 1958 for over 1 million. Upon acquiring the station the company spent £500,000 on improvements such as new buildings; only the original
homestead and
corrugated iron station store remained. Weiss introduced 1,200
Santa Gertrudis stud bulls into the herd to improve the stock, and the station had a total of 75 bores to help combat future droughts. The overseer and Assistant Manager to Charlie Weiss during much of that period was Nick Campbell-Jones, who commenced as a jackaroo on Brunette Downs at the start of 1963 and left in 1975. Many of his experiences at Brunette Downs during that period, as well working on other stations in the Northern Territory and Queensland, are recounted in his autobiography ''Don't Die Wondering'' published in 2012. Between January 1973 and March 1974 the area received record rainfall, compared to an annual average of . This left of the property underwater, and filled the normally dry lakes of Corella and Sylvester. By 1977 the lakes were still active, and were home to over 500,000
pelicans that had come to the area to nest. By 1978 the station had a herd of 56,000 head of cattle and some 800 horses. Some of the staff included on the station payroll were a full-time saddle maker, clinic nurse, pilot and
grader driver. The grader driver tended to the of graded roads on the property. Other infrastructure included a
laboratory, general store and drive-in picture theatre. Ken Warriner was the manager of the station in 1978. He had previously run other King Ranch properties,
Mount House and
Glenroy, and would later go on to be a part owner of
Newcastle Waters station and chairman of the
Consolidated Pastoral Company. The station was acquired by the
Australian Agricultural Company in 1979, and Warriner left in 1980 to take over
Henbury and Newcastle Waters as a part owner. Henry Burke managed the station for a number of years before taking up the General Manager position at AACo in March 2012. His replacement is Michael Johnson, who previously managed Avon Downs station. ==Climate==