The same word was used for a defensible residence constructed on the American frontier during the early nineteenth century. Station refers to a facility equipped with special equipment and personnel for a particular purpose-in this case in Australasia-for pastoral industry, see Australia: Stations and New Zealand: Stations.
Stock refers to livestock, its purchase and sale.Similar and sometimes the same organisations operated in Latin America and the Midwestern United States, which had extensive pastoral farming. In practice, they were the pastoralist's banker. These rural business services institutions originated, when communications were slow and often very difficult, to cope with the double remoteness of early Australian and New Zealand primary producers from their nearest settlement and, particularly in the case of wool, from their overseas markets.
