Woodgreen Station

The first lessee of the pastoral lease created in 1918 was Bob Purvis Sr, who first ran it as a sheep station and bred horses, before introducing cattle.

Since then, Bob Jr has slowly but surely rejuvenated the property, making it a viable concern, albeit with much lower stocking rates of cattle, by applying some of the techniques of regenerative agriculture and developing his own methods to improve the soil.

[5] Robert (Bob) H. Purvis Sr had come out from England,[6] and worked as a bush contractor[7] before acquiring the 2,000 km (1,200 mi) pastoral lease known as Atartinga in 1918.

[7] She published articles,[10] and was also the first person to donate a box of papers to the Northern Territory Archives' Alice Springs office after it opened in 2003.

[11] His father had got into huge debt by the time he took over ownership[14] in 1960, largely due to land degradation caused by poor grazing practices.

[5] Bob Jr worked slowly over decades to improve the soil to make the property sustainable, using some methods which he had developed himself to reverse the damage.

He has used fire for land management, adapted from Indigenous fire-stick farming, and sites once dominated by mulga have been transformed into open ghost gum grassland with many species of grasses and forbs, which offer better nutrition for cattle.

[15] A 2021 article calls him a pioneer of the model of sustainably low stocking rates and maintaining high-quality beef, which caused him to be ostracised by some in the cattle industry.

[16] In March 2020, anthropologists' work was under way on both Woodgreen and Mount Skinner pastoral leases as the basis for any future native title claims, under the auspices of the Central Land Council.

[27] On 6 September 1935, a General Aircraft Monospar ST-12 operated by Australian Transcontinental Airways (ATA)[a] suffered engine failure, and made an emergency landing on Woodgreen Station.

Reports vary slightly,[29] but the plane was said to be carrying the pilot J. Maher, with two passengers, Renfrey and Maloney, and a young crocodile that was being transported to Adelaide.

In the meantime, Don Thomas from Alice Springs drove to Woodgreen to pick up Purvis Sr and two "blackfellows", one of whom managed to track down the plane based on the description of the location given by Renfrey.

After Topsy's mother was killed, around 1919, Ron Purvis Sr persuaded the NT police commissioner Robert Stott to put Topsy in to the "Half-caste Institution Alice Springs" (The Bungalow, then at the Alice Springs Telegraph Station), although she was not technically "half-caste", on condition that Purvis employed her on Wood Green Station as soon as she had completed her schooling there, which he did.

[32] Following the bombing of Darwin in February 1942, there were military orders to evacuate The Bungalow, so Topsy took her girls to New South Wales to find work there.

[34] Artist and cultural leader, Anmatyerr woman Hilda "Cookie" Price Pwerl (c. 1930–2019), worked for rations at Woodgreen (known to her as Athatheng) and other stations in the area when she was young.