Anti-coal campaigners have a farm sale win
The Sutton Forest, NSW, farm of anti-coal Southern Highlands protest leader Peter Martin and wife Kim has been sold.
The Sutton Forest farm of victorious anti-coal Southern Highlands protest leader Peter Martin and wife Kim has been sold.
The 43ha Sutton Forest property was listed through Richard Royle, the stock and station agent at Cullen Royle, in December. A Sydney family recently purchased it as a weekender.
The price guide was $6.5m, bare of machinery and furniture. The farm cost $1.1m in 2002, a year after Martin left his role as CEO of Rothschild Australia Asset Management. The property was dry and heavily grazed at the time, with a small pocket of endangered shale woodlands.
Royle noted the Martins considered themselves the “current custodians” of what’s become a nature conservation retreat after they planted 30,000 native grasses, shrubs and trees.
The property also has a truffiere of 1400 oak trees. There’s infrastructure for cattle and horses.
The POSCO Cockatoo Coal consortium quit the highlands in 2021 after losing a decade-long campaign to secure mining approval.
State’s rich harvest
As farmers gather at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, fresh data has been released showing that NSW has experienced a fourth year in a row of double-digit farm price rises.
Farm land prices in NSW were up by about 20 per cent to $8508 a hectare by 2022’s end, according to Elders general manager Mark Barber.
Elders calculated the national median price per hectare increased by 18 per cent to $8142 in 2022, while transaction volumes declined by 37 per cent to 5794 totalling $11.5bn.
The five-year compound average growth rate stands at 10.5 per cent, indicating the median price per hectare is doubling every 6.9 years. Victoria’s median price per hectare was up 22.5 per cent to $12937 last year, in its second year of growth above 20 per cent. The Northern Territory saw the biggest increase – up 59 per cent to $2267, and ranked as the only state/territory where sale volumes were up. WA had the most subdued annual growth at 6 per cent to $6929.
Retreat sells for $6.8m
Solicitor Marjorie Nicholas, widow of the late Victoria Racing Club chairman Hilton Nicholas, sold Oakbank, her Howlong retreat, for $6.8m last spring, with it settling recently through Elders Albury to the Scott family.
The 226ha Southern Riverina farm sits 30 minutes from the border with a five-bedroom, five-bathroom architecturally designed homestead. The initial holding was bought from the Dornan family in 1967 for $149,500 by her husband, the son of the founder of the Aspro fortune, pharmacist George Nicholas, who had come up with the formula as during World War I medications previously imported from Germany could no longer be sourced.
Oakbank was initially used to provide feed for his Shirley Park, Woodend horse stud, and to spell his horses. The couple married in 1989, and would visit the farm in his Cessna, but on retirement they moved permanently from Victoria. Hilton died in 2017 aged 91.
Farm funds banked
Former Commonwealth Bank chief David Murray pocketed $11m last year when he reduced his Upper Hunter farm holdings, selling 2258ha of grazing land in the Merriwa district.
It was 2015 when Murray first bought into the Hunter Valley, with his Wagyu cattle station formed around the 1930s, the Dales homestead within the former vast Brindley Park empire owned by pioneering pastoralist James Brindley Bettington in the 1800s. The 73-year-old shared his farming interests with wife Stephanie running black angus, having brought in some of the best embryos from North America bloodlines.
The Montego and Moona offerings had cost $6.47m and $2.263m when bought in 2017. They sold through McGrath Upper Hunter agent Michael Burke in conjunction with Huw Llewelyn at GM Llewelyn and Co to grazier Annabelle Kibble.
Stud farm’s new owner
Arrowfield Stud’s equine summer farm in the Hunter Valley has been bought by Margo Duncan, who has been breeding commercial Angus cattle for more than 25 years on an aggregation of Lower Hunter properties.
Duncan and her late husband Bruce studied at Tocal Agricultural College in the 1970s before setting up Boambee Angus. Marketed through Tavis Chivers at Dillon and Sons, in conjunction with Burke, the 284ha Glen Oak property fetched $11.55m last month.
Origin snaps up land
Origin Energy has spent $7.2m to buy Kerrawary, a large-scale livestock holding 198km south of Sydney at Big Hill.
The 962ha farm in the NSW Southern Tablelands had come with zoning that allowed subdivision into 100ha lots.
It has been operated as a sheep enterprise alongside cattle with its carrying capacity of 2500 DSE to 3000DSE amid scenic countryside. It boasts numerous dams and creeks that are spring fed. It also features 6.5km of river frontage with the junction of the Tarlo and Wollondilly rivers.
Origin has been “examining potential energy storage or energy production options”, a spokesman for Origin chief executive Frank Calabria said.
$118m pastoral deal
One of NSW’s priciest recent pastoral sales was Thurloo Downs, in the far northwest of the state, with the 437,394ha site between Tibooburra and Bourke becoming a national park. The NSW government paid $118m to octogenarian farmer Peter Hughes. The site has “globally significant wetlands, vast outback ecosystems, and a haven for about 50 threatened species,” former environment minister James Griffin advised.
City of Churches tops
Adelaide was the top capital city market over the quiet Easter period, with a 70 per cent auction success rate, according to realestate.com.au, from 46 results.
Sydney and Melbourne were both at 56 per cent, down from 61 per cent and 64 per cent in the busier week prior. There were just 99 results across Victoria, with the top advised sale of $9m secured in Toorak last Wednesday at Kay & Burton auction. The single-storey Hopetoun Rd home was listed following the death of Cecile Mangan, the widow of Lou Mangan, the longtime managing director at Carlton & United Breweries who died in 2015 aged 93. There had been three bidders after being marketed with $8m-$8.8m price guidance through Rebecca Edwards, Robert Li and Scott Patterson.
With word emerging the buyer was Peter Johnston of Royale Constructions, no surprise that a new home is planned for the 859sq m site. The four-bedroom, two-bathroom home had been bought in 1985 for $243,000 from CUB, which had paid $204,000 in 1979 when bought from pharmaceutical manufacturer Phillip Pleasance, of the pioneering Martin & Pleasance firm, and wife Josiane. The couple had bought it in early 1978 for $196,000 from solicitor Graeme Samuel and his then wife, Rose Lynne.
Mangan retired in 1985 from the boards of the brewer and its then parent, Elders IXL, after 33 years employment. His 12 years at the helm saw profits rise from $12m to $65m.
It could be your own Downton Abbey
Built in the 1870s, this massive pile on 2.83ha in NSW’s Hunter Valley is one of Australia’s finest heritage estates. Asking price: $10 million.
‘Relief needed to lure buyers back’
Interest rates would need to be cut five or six times to motivate buyers back into the property market, with younger Australians likely to purchase sooner.