Farm not for sale, but Heytesbury, the Holmes à Court Western Australia stud to cease operating
Heytesbury Stud, the famous Western Australia stud property founded of the Holmes à Court family, is to cease operating as a commercial breeding enterprise.
The influential thoroughbred breeding operation - launched in 1971 - will sell its yearlings for the last time at this month's Perth Magic Millions sale.
Heytesbury Holdings director Paul Holmes à Court said the Keysbrook stud will shut down, but that the property will be retained by the family.
"It's obviously a difficult decision on a personal level, having watched my father, mother and grandmother develop Heytesbury Stud from scratch," the son of the late Robert Holmes à Court told the West Australian.
"I'm retaining our racing colours, an interest in a new stallion Ouqba and certainly won't be selling the farm, but 2013 was our last breeding season," Paul Holmes à Court told the local paper.
The late Robert Holmes à Court launched Heytesbury four decades ago with the dream of breeding his own Melbourne Cup winner.
He bought Melbourne Cup winner Silver Knight as the stud's foundation sire and the mare Brenta was among his foundation broodmares.
The mating of Silver Knight and Brenta produced Black Knight, the Holmes à Court owned winner of the 1984 Melbourne Cup, trained by George Hanlon.
The Keysbrook property (pictured below), one hour south of Perth, has 900 acres.
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“In some ways, Heytesbury Stud’s closure is the end of an era for the WA industry. My father did things that had never been done before, and might never happen again,” Paul Holmes à Court added.
For a time, Robert's widow, Janet was Australia's richest woman following his sudden death in 1990. It was in the mid-1990s when Heytesbury Holdings closed its horse-breeding programs at Wallan in Victoria having received government approval for the subdivision of the 1000-hectare property, 50 kilometres north of Melbourne, into 700 rural residential lots of around 1.2 hectares to two hectares each.
At the time it was expected residential lots are expected to sell in the $80,000 to $90,000 range.
The estate sold in 1997 to developers the Far East Consortium who developed the estate into Hidden Valley (pictured below), where land is available for sale.
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By 2008 with 950 broad-acre allotments, along with smaller blocks averaging 1,000 square metres, it was home to more than 400 families with a golf course redesigned by Australian Open golfer, Craig Parry and a modern equestrian centre.
Heytesbury also sold Trelawney Stud, Heytesbury's 172 hectare stud in the Waikato region on New Zealand's south island was sold.
