On The Land
4 December, 2022
Malanda property sets new sale benchmark
MALANDA biodynamic grazing property, “Waratah”, has sold at auction for $1,750,000, creating a new benchmark for grazing blocks on the Southern Tablelands.
Located 13km out of Malanda, the 66.1ha (151 acre) property featured a four-bedroom house, outstanding sedge-free pastures, four spring-fed creeks, undercover yards, two sheds and a high annual rainfall.
At Wednesday’s auction, vendors Steve and Odette Plozza received $28,636.88/ha ($11,589.40/acre) in a flattening market for the block they had farmed for over 21 years, exceeding the expectations of both the vendors and Queensland Rural agent, Scott Hart, on the day.
Mr Hart said the property had cre-ated significant interest in the market place, with 31 enquiries, eight property inspections and four registered bidders.
“We received enquiries from Vic-toria, New South Wales, coastal areas, including Cairns and the Tablelands,” he said.
This created an expectation there would be a flood of offers when bidding opened for auctioneer, Jacko Shephard, but one bold phone bid both opened and closed the auction at $1.75 million, with Mr Shephard unable to raise a second bid from the audience.
The purchasers were Ernie and Ky-lie Camp of the 94,000ha (232,278.7 acre) “Floraville Station”, 64km south
of Burketown. Ernie just happens to be Odette's brother and Odette was raised on Floraville Station from four years of age while her husband Steve grew up on “Calvert Hills” in the Northern Territory.
The Camps have become the latest in a long line of western graziers buying into the Atherton Tablelands to ensure a better lifestyle for themselves during their retirement.
Waratah was placed on the market as part of Steve and Odette's long-term planned exit of their 283.3ha (700 acre) aggregation.
“We made sure our British White breeding herd went to the right owners before we put the block on the market,” Odette said.
After spending over two decades building up their business and converting it to a completely biodynamic operation, Odette said they both realised it was time to reduce their workload and do a bit more travelling.
They have retained a 60.3ha (149 acre) block next door and will begin shifting their steers onto it post-sale. They will be building a new home on their remaining country and intend to keep turning steers off its rich pastures, enjoying its excellent weight gains and strong carrying capacity.
“When we had put together our first 162ha of country, we decided we didn't want to have to work off farm, but the input costs of chemicals and herbicides were too high, so Odette attended a Sustainable Agriculture convention in
Cairns, where she heard about the Biodynamic system,” Steve said.
“We knew immediately it was right for us. We wanted to get away from the long-established structure where society ‘farms the farmers’. It took us three years before we could see a significant difference in our pastures, which now contain 52 different varieties of legumes.
“We put the soil first and then focused on the cattle, which we changed from Charbray to the rarer British White breed. We gave them a two-year timeframe to perform and decided we would stick with them.”
The Plozza cattle regularly topped their sections in the Mareeba sale over the last couple of years, but the prime cattle were sold to the Mareeba Health Food shop to be retailed as biodynamic beef.
Compared to the $3,296.38/ha ($1334.01/acre) price tag, they received for the parcel of land they sold last year, Steve and Odette were very happy with their sale result.
“We believe Waratah was well and truly worth the money and know it will continue to pay back its new owners if it is well run and respected,” Odette said.
