"That was right nice of you to come out with those beers, Fred," Sherlock said, as Mueller and I hammered in the stakes to which we would tie down the airplane.

"Somewhere along the way," he told me, "it occurred to me that this would be one hell of a fun way to make a living."

Hughes, 33, is low-key and solidly lean. And, sheep jokes notwithstanding, he is apparently considered one of the most eligible bachelors in the eastern outback. He's the fifth generation in a line of graziers who settled in western New South Wales and built something of an empire of sheep and cattle stations, including the 150,000-acre (60,703-hectare) Kars Station. Later we would fly over another Hughes family station that is, at four and a half million acres (18,210 square kilometers), larger than the state of Connecticut.

In the Australian outback, ranching is done on a mind-boggling scale. Apart from pumping water from deep bore wells, there's very little human intervention in a sheep's life. The animals roam freely, finding their own feed, giving birth unassisted, and encountering humans only when something disagreeable is in store for them. Country this arid can support only about one sheep per 15 acres (6 hectares) in a good season, but more than three years of drought have left the land particularly bare and fragile.

"In the good years," Hughes said, "you make a lot of money. Then you weather the bad ones, if you manage it right."

Now we sat at a table under a sprawling eucalyptus tree that I had repeatedly dodged on my final approaches. As the sky flared into spectacular hues of pink and purple, Hughes threw some lamb chops on the barbie and plucked a few bottles of hearty red wine from the kitchen. His dog Boofa, a red kelpie, amused himself by chasing giant moths around the garden.