Biggest farms and the people who own them

More than 15 of Australia’s biggest farms and stations have changed hands in high-profile deals in the past 18 months, as influential farming families and investor-backed corporate buyers trade some huge parcels of land.

Most notably the MacLachlans, one of the country’s oldest and most powerful farming families and the nation’s third-largest landowner via Jumbuck Pastoral, has sold Australia’s biggest sheep station and divided its family empire.

The sprawling Rawlinna Station was bought by Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, via his ASX-listed Fortescue Metals Group’s Fortescue Future Industries last year, while fourth-generation managing directors Jock and Callum MacLachlan departed the family company, taking ownership of several stations each.

Jumbuck Pastoral’s 5.2 million-hectare portfolio was divided between Hugh MacLachlan and his children, with Callum taking control of the Killarney, Wave Hill and Springfield stations, and Jock managing the Meda and McCoys Well properties.

Elsewhere, in Western Australia a 2.9 million-hectare portfolio including seven East Kimberley cattle stations changed hands for more than $300 million as Hong Kong-Australian billionaire Hui Wing Mau sold the portfolio to Canada’s mega-superfund Alberta Investment Management Corporation and Sydney-based partner New Agriculture.

A handful of new players have also entered the frame including Wealthcheck, which purchased the 670,000ha Limbunya and Maryfield Stations at Katherine and the 450,000ha Benmara Station at Elliot.

In addition Dale Appleton and family have massively expanded their Appleton Cattle Company, acquiring the Durrie, Glengyle and Naryilco properties – totalling almost two million hectares – from Gina Rinehart’s S Kidman and Co last year.

However, it is Northern Territory mates and pastoralists, Viv Oldfield and Donny Costello, who hold the title as Australia’s largest private landholders.

Their portfolio spans more than nine million hectares – larger than Tasmania and more than twice the size of Switzerland – via their Crown Point Pastoral Company.

Oldfield and Costello’s most recent purchase of 730,000-hectare Mount Doreen, northwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, from the Braitling family, was worth a reported $34.7 million.