Taking Flight at Kanandah

Ruth Swann was wrangling four children, including a baby, when she moved onto a brand new pastoral property with no amenities, in one of the world’s most isolated places.

Her husband, Eric, was the first manager of Kanandah, a sheep station carved out of the flat Nullarbor Plain after the Western Australian government opened it up for settlement in the early 1960s. ‘There was nothing there,’ recalls the Swanns’ eldest child, Jenny Kroonstuiver. ‘Dad went out to start setting things up, and Mum and we four children were left in Adelaide but Mum got a bit jack of that so she sent a telegram to say that we were on the way.’