Prized Wagga Wagga Deltroit Station hoped to round off spring selling season, bookending with Billabong sale
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Deltroit Station at Wagga Wagga has been listed for sale.
It could fetch between $15 million and $18 million at its December 15 auction, according to Meares & Associates listing agent Chris Meares.
It’s a 2,545-hectare property with high-performance perennial pastures, cropping areas on rich creek flats and sheep and cattle breeding farmland estimated to carry in excess of 30,000 dry sheep equivalent.
It’s set in Mundarlo, midway between Sydney (409 kilometres) and Melbourne (474 kilometres).
It comes with a 1903 Federation brick homestead designed by Sydney architect William Nixon, which was refurbished in 2000.
A stone-built, modernised four-bedroom Cobb & Co. coaching inn, The Junction Hotel, dating from 1868 stands on Deltroit’s western boundary, along the Old Hume Highway, formerly the Port Phillip Road. Built by John Griffiths, a free settler from England who came to Australia in the Gold Rush, the hotel closed in 1916 and has been used as accommodation for Deltroit employees
Deltroit has been listed by Anthony Crichton-Brown, a former chairman of Lumley Insurance.
He also owns Tooronga in the Riverina and Humula Station near Yass.
The spring selling season started with the sale of Billabong Station, a 1,875-hectare Wagga Wagga district cropping and pastoral property, at around $8.8 million.
It was sold by the Sydney lawyer and property group director David Baffsky after 31 years as the family's farming enterprise.
There were seven registered bidders at the auction through Meares and Associates in conjunction with Bill Schulz at Landmark Harcourts Wagga Wagga.
Billabong is rated at 25,000 dry sheep equivalents, with up to 1,417 hectare sown to cash and fodder crops each year.
“Deltroit Station has always been regarded as one of the finest properties in eastern Australia,” Chris Meares says.
It was established in the 1860s when settled by free English migrant William Richardson, originally part of the famous run of nearby Yabtree.
Three generations of the Richardson family developed Deltroit over 100 years, creating a commercial Shorthorn herd and fine wool Merino flock.
In 1963 Robert Kleberg, president of US company King Ranch, who had long coveted the Deltroit Shorthorn that had won worldwide acclaim, purchased Deltroit and its entire herd for internationally renowned King Ranch Group.
With the death of Kleberg, King Ranch sold all its Australian properties, including Deltroit, in the late 1970s.
It was listed in early 1977 by King Ranch with a $1,185,000 asking price, but didn’t sell. Later in 1977 at an auction at Romano’s Hotel at Wagga Wagga, the buyers were offered extended settlement terms with the balance over four years with interest at 9.5%.
The listing agents were Pitt, Son & Badgery in conjunction with Griffiths, King & Rice of Melbourne. It was quickly relisted in 1978 by Ron Finemore and Kevin McMahon, this time with the auction at Wagga’s Commercial Club, when it sold at $890,000 to Tom Barr-Smith, reflecting $372 a hectare.
The property last traded in 1990. The property has a significant coverage of shade timber, including yellow and white box, kurrajong and wattle. About 130,000 natives have been planted and established since 1992.