Barambah cattle station, inland from Sunshine Coast, gets bullish $4.83 million auction result
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The 150-year-old Barambah homestead – one of the oldest stations in Queensland – has been sold at a bullish $4.83 million by Brisbane stockbroker Steve Wilson and his wife, Jane. It’s been the Wilsons’ country abode for 11 years.
More than $4 million was being sought through Ray White Rural agents Lex Heinemann and Danny Bukowski. It’s been sold to a local family, the Mercers, who beat off five other bidders.
Established in 1843, Barambah Station was 66,368 hectares (164,000 acres) in the 1800s. After squatters Barambah, the traditional land of the Wakka Wakka, was held by the Sydney merchant Richard “China” Jones in 1850. His son, Thomas Jones, was joined for a few years in the 1870s by George Clapperton, and after them from 1876 Barambah was held by the Moore family for nearly a century.
By then the Barambah Hereford Stud was famous, as were the racehorses. After three generations the Moores sold to an English pastoral family, the Vesteys in 1967, then Val Crowe took over in 1973, keen to move his stock up as the new Wivenhoe Dam engulfed his historic Bellevue.
The neighbourhood – within a 90-minute drive inland from Noosa in the heart of the South Burnett region – now has other entrepreneurs, notably McCullough Robertson chief Brett Heading and mining magnate Nick Mather.
Barambah Station’s renovation was awarded the inaugural 2009 Gabriel Poole Award for Building of the Year, with the judges viewing it as an exemplar of how issues of heritage and sustainability align. It retains many of the original features including four-metre ceilings and ornate fretwork and a spectacular hexagon shaped turreted rotunda.
There is a restored Cobb and Co coach house and cattle yards.
Steve, until recently the head of the 115-year-old family stockbroking group Wilson HTM, will maintain their nearby award-winning vineyard.
