The Queensland Government’s Department of Environment and Science has snapped up Australia’s northernmost pastoral property, Bramwell Station, for about $11.5 million after auction.
Located 240 kilometres south of the tip of Cape York, the cattle and eco-tourism property spans 131,900 hectares and is the last stop heading north and at the start of the famous Old Telegraph Line four-wheel-drive track.
The vendors, Wendy Kozicka and Vince Bowyer, had owned Bramwell for 20 years and put the land up for sale amid heightened demand for domestic travel and some of the best seasonal and market conditions seen in living memory.
They have bought the 90,000 hectare Strathleven Station, some 350 kilometres north west of Mareeba.
Bramwell can carry up to 7,500 adult equivalents and was offered with long-term rolling pastoral leases and features a popular tourist park and roadhouse that is about 12 kilometres north of its homestead, and the last fuel stop before the Jardine River Crossing.
The tourist park has 28 accommodation rooms, kitchen-style bar and restaurant, open camping and a caravan park area with amenities. Bramwell Station also offers potentially more than $150,000 a year in additional income from carbon credits.
Geoff Warriner of JLL Agribusiness, and Andrew Adcock of Adcock Partners managed the auction campaign.
Beef market strengthens pricing
The beef market can expect further record prices, according to Rabobank, while almost 90% of farmers across the country expecting the strong business conditions to either continue or improve over the year ahead.
The climate has seen strong pricing figures achieved. North Queensland grazing and farming property Inkerman Station has just been sold for over $30 million, with the cattle price boon propelling its value to almost triple what it was less than five years ago, while Packhorse Pastoral Co forked out $30 million to acquire large-scale Roma district property Stuarts Creek and cattle, in one of the Maranoa region’s largest single grazing asset transactions.
Miranda Downs in Queensland’s Gulf of Carpentaria in June set a new price record of more than $180 million for a single pastoral holding, tens of millions of dollars above initial expectations.
New York-based investment firm The Rohatyn Group is hoping for more than $55 million from the sale of the Kaiuroo Aggregation in Central Queensland, while mining magnate Gina Rinehart is shopping around a $300 portfolio of cattle stations and livestock spanning 1.876 million hectares in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Prominent retail real estate player Brett Blundy has offered a pair of NT stations with expectations of around $230 million.
