More than half of adults in Western Australia's Pilbara region — 51 per cent — drank more than 10 standard drinks a week in 2024, according to figures from the state's Epidemiology Directorate, compared with 49.2 per cent in the Kimberley and 35.5 per cent across WA as a whole.
Alcohol consumption rates remain elevated in remote Western Australia, though attitudes among young workers show signs of shift
More than half of adults in Western Australia's Pilbara region — 51 per cent — drank more than 10 standard drinks a week in 2024, according to figures from the state's Epidemiology Directorate, compared with 49.2 per cent in the Kimberley and 35.5 per cent across WA as a whole.
Mark Bettini was 21 when his family took over De Grey Station near Port Hedland, approximately 1,700 kilometres north of Perth, in 1996. He said long working hours and social influence contributed to excessive drinking among his crew in the early years, and acknowledged his own participation. He described alcohol as an easy attraction after physically demanding days, and said the habit was difficult to break once established.
Nyanda McBride, a professor at the National Drug Research Institute, said rural and farming areas tended to have higher rates of hazardous drinking. She cited risk factors including being male, lower socioeconomic status, and psychological conditions such as depression, as well as financial and seasonal stressors, poor work-life balance, physical health issues, and disconnection. She said alcohol was commonly used as a coping strategy in these settings.
McBride also identified barriers that limited access to mental healthcare in remote areas, including physical distance from services, limited knowledge of treatment options, and cultural stoicism — particularly among men — around seeking help.
Shanna Whan, who began working in the agricultural sector as a teenager, said drinking culture in rural Australia was deeply ingrained. She described alcohol as central to social life on the station where she worked after school, and said the environment was unsafe. She said that within her first year out of boarding school she had been sexually assaulted six times, with alcohol involved in each instance, and described the experience as 'horrifying' while also characterising it as 'a very common story.'
Whan said she came to believe that drinking was required to conduct business, form friendships, and fit in within the agricultural sector. After two years of personal recovery, she founded the charity Sober in the Country, with the stated aim of normalising alcohol refusal in rural communities. She said the charity's advocacy over 12 years had contributed to significant change, particularly in how young people in rural and remote areas viewed alcohol, but that more work remained.
Bettini said De Grey Station had experienced incidents of staff arriving for work still intoxicated after drinking, damage to accommodation, and problems specifically linked to spirits consumption, which led to a temporary ban on spirits on more than one occasion. He said those measures had not been necessary in recent years. He described a marked improvement over the past decade in the drinking habits and attitudes of younger staff members entering the workforce aged 17 to 19, and said this gave him confidence in the industry's future safety and leadership.
- No response or data from Western Australian government health authorities on policy measures targeting alcohol consumption in the Pilbara or Kimberley.
- No information on what specific interventions, if any, De Grey Station or other cattle stations have formally adopted beyond informal spirits bans.
- No data on trends over time in Pilbara or Kimberley drinking rates to establish whether the figures are improving, stable, or worsening.
- No independent verification of Sober in the Country's claimed impact on drinking attitudes in rural communities.
- No information on the demographic breakdown — age, gender, occupation — of the 51 per cent figure for Pilbara adults drinking more than 10 standard drinks per week.
- The source text supplied appears truncated; some material may be missing.
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