On The Land
25 February, 2022
New sale record for Upper Barron property
TABLELAND property, “Jucani Park” set a new record for the highly regarded Upper Barron area when it sold through Nutrien Ag Tolga last Thursday to Julia Creek graziers for $6,100,000, or $36,147.25/ha.
Believing it was no longer a good fi t for their New South Wales-based Hillgrove Pastoral Company, former chairman of the Australian Agricultural Company and former director of Rural Press, Graincorp Limited and the Meat Research Corporation, vendor Nick Burton Taylor and his wife Julia, pared the Far North Queensland asset from their property portfolio.
Charters Towers-based Nutrien auctioneer Tony Bowen said they had 11 registered bidders, five of whom were active during the auction.
The price opened at $4,800,000 and increased quickly in $100,000 increments until just two bidders remained. Purchasers Brett and Vanda Hick of “Lindfield Station”, joked that they were “looking for the gold mine” in the contract after paying “way too much” for the 169-ha property which was sold on a walk-in, walk-out basis and boasted a substantial five-bedroom brick home.
Bought as a semi-retirement block for the couple after years of droughts and the terrible flood of 2019 on their 89,032-ha western aggregation, Mrs Hick said she just wanted to move “somewhere nice and green”.
She said she had been referring to “Jucani Park” as “my place” since they looked at it and was very nervous about the auction outcome.
“I was worried I might cry if we got Jucani and cry if we didn't get it, but managed to hold it together. We will start shifting cattle in from the west in the next fortnight as the vendors, have kindly given us early access to the property,” she said.
Mr Hick admitted he was getting concerned towards the end of the auction when the bids were still going up in $50,000 lots.
“We were prepared to pay this kind of the money for the place, but hoping we wouldn't have to,” he said.
“I wouldn't have gone much further, but it was a good result and it was time we left Lindfield for the kids to manage. Vanda had her heart set on the place and you know the old saying, ‘happy wife, happy life’.”
“Jucani Park” sits on two freehold titles. Just 15km for the Atherton Post Office, its 1479mm annual rainfall combined with its strong, red volcanic soils is suited to pastures, cropping or orchard production, and has been operated as a backgrounding and fattening depot.
Stud angus breeder Burton Taylor claims that with a regular fertilising program, the property will achieve annual weight gains of 210kg whilst consistently carrying 350 adult equivalents.
