Come-by-Chance NSW farm with racecourse attracts four auction punters, and the neighbours emerge the winners
The Come-by-Chance Picnic racecourse and the adjoining 3,400-hectare farm holdings were passed in at auction last Friday.
There were four registered bidders. And the Gleneda property – with racecourse – has since been sold to the O’Brien family, Michael, Annie, Tom and Millie, shortly after its auction. The O'Briens own Kincora, Evandale and Bellevue, which is the neighbouring property to Gleneda. The Walgett grazier and dryland cropping farmer Michael O'Brien was named the 2009 NSW Farmer of the Year. His family's farm totals almost 40,000 hectares, where he runs a mixed Angus cattle and Dohne sheep livestock enterprise and dryland cropping.
The 1,683-hectare Gleneda property sold for $570 per acre, which amounts to $2,371,633.20.
Kia-Ora, the adjoining 1,717-hectare farm, was passed in at auction at $505 per acre, and negotiations are continuing with several parties.
Come-by-Chance is about 100 kilometres north west of Coonamble and 250 kilometres from Dubbo, and it has hosted a race meeting for more than 50 years.
The offering dates back to brothers George and William Colless, who happened across a block of land that had missed allocation after the 1861 Lands Act settlement.
Surprised, they purchased it and named their farm Come By Chance, acknowledging the good fortune connected with their find.
The Colless brothers later owned the post office, hotel, police station, blacksmith shop and cemetery.
At one stage Come-by-Chance was believed to be the only privately owned village in the southern hemisphere.
The town features in Banjo Paterson's wistful ballad Come-by-Chance.
Ray White Rural agents Brian McAneney and Don Schieb listed the holding in the middle of the so-called Golden Triangle, with buyers told the incoming purchaser would have immediate access to the cultivation for the 2012 season and would reap the benefits of the sorghum and lablab crop.
