[3] Elderslie Station lies at the eastern rim of a roughly circular zone measuring some 130 km across that has been identified by Geoscience Australia as a crustal anomaly.

John McKinlay and his party would have trekked through the area in 1862, while searching for the Burke and Wills expedition, following the banks to the Diamantina to where it met Middleton Creek en route to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

In 1873, William Forsayth took up three blocks fronting the Diamantina and Western Rivers covering some 3,108 km2 (1,200 sq mi) and named the run Doveridge.

[2] The first sheep arrived at the property in mid-1874[3] and then later the same year Forsayth transferred the lease to Donald Wallace, a Victorian pastoralist, who began to acquire surrounding blocks until the area was 4,662 km2 (1,800 sq mi), encompassing the land where Winton is located all the way to Middleton Creek.

[7] Banjo Paterson was thought to have worked at Elderslie as a jackeroo or storekeeper in 1895, at about the time he wrote "Waltzing Matilda",[8] while visiting nearby Dagworth Station.

[12] It had been acquired by Mr. C. J. Brabazon, who had recently sold Warenda Station and began improving his new run by employing about 100 men to work on fencing and other projects.

[13] The first commercial flight in the Northern Territory by Qantas carried Mr. C. J. Brabazon from Elderslie to Austral Downs, another property he owned, in 1921.

The Elderslie leasehold was reduced to a size of 208.5 km2 (81 sq mi) and purchased by John Dixon, who sold again in 1954 to Keith Watts for five shillings per acre.