Billabong Station at Wagga Wagga listed for October auction
Billabong Station, the 1,875-hectare Eurongilly Valley cropping and pastoral property, has been listed for October 13 auction.
It is in Nangus, 50 kilometres from Wagga Wagga.
The property, which is 90% arable, has a diversified production including cattle breeding, fat lamb production and soft commodities including cereals, lupins and canola.
“It is arguably one of the best developed agricultural holdings in the region,” its listing agent Chris Meares of Meares & Associates says. It has been listed in conjunction with Bill Schulz at Landmark Harcourts Wagga Wagga.
It has been listed by the Sydney lawyer and property group director David Baffsky. Billabong has been his family's farming enterprise for 31 years.
The Eastern Riverina property had been in the Beveridge family for 76 years. The Beveridge family had strong links to the Country Women's Association.
It’s been Baffsky’s sole rural holding since 1997, when he sold the 892-hectare Oura Station, east of Wagga Wagga, to American billionaire Barbara Cox-Anthony for $2.5 million. Cox-Anthony owned several other nearby properties.
The listing suggests a change in emphasis for Baffsky and his wife, Helen, who spent $6 million late last year on Runnymede, an 18-hectare property at Glenquarry in the NSW Southern Highlands through Bowral agent Drew Lindsay.
The property, with Billabong Creek frontage, comes with a five-bedroom homestead plus additional houses. The homestead was renovated in 1979 and extended in 2007 with additional accommodation.
It has a six-stand woolshed, four sets of sheep yards, and two sets of cattle yards.
Its highly developed agricultural productions comprises a mix of established perennial and annual pastures prescribed by agronomist Mark Lucas. Traditionally 800 hectares of cereal and dual-purpose crops are sown annually, with up to 1,400 hectares in some years. The standing crops are to be given in with the sale.