Farmer Alastair Wills has purchased historic Naringal Station in Victoria's Western Districts for $17 million.
Naringal Homestead, a seven bedroom, eight bathroom fully-renovated double brick residence, sits in gardens designed by Edna Walling.
It replaced the original 1904-built homestead, which burned down in a bushfire in 1944.
The 2200-hectare farm at Wallinduc, one of the earliest pastoral holdings in the area, had been owned by the Rowe family for more than 170 years until it was sold to businessman Graeme Croft in November 2011.
Graeme Croft, who founded family-run aged care developer and operator Innovative Care, has extensively developed and extended the property.
The mixed-use farm comprised 12,000 breeding ewes for prime lamb production, an intensive cattle fattening system turning over 5,000 head per annum, a 350 sow piggery and 750 hectares of crops.
It is located 45 kilometres from Ballarat – Victoria’s largest sheep saleyards – and 160 kilometres from Melbourne.
But the Australian Financial Review says the farm will revert to pure cropping use, growing wheat, granola, oats and barley.
He was reportedly one of the underbidders on another Western Districts' property, the 5200-hectare cropping and grazing Demeter Farming portfolio, which was acquired by a syndicate of Victorian farmers in February for around $30 million.
The Rowe family arrived in Australia in 1841 and took up the rural holding later that year. The farm had an asking price of $7.5 million when it was purchased by the Crofts in 2011 for around $7 million.
