Property

Property: Gibson family buy NT’s Manners Creek in expansion move

Jon Condon, 25/08/2016
Watercourse along Manners Creek, after recent rain

Watercourse along Manners Creek, after recent rain

 

Southwest Queensland’s Mick Gibson and family have exchanged contracts to purchase extensive Qld/NT border region breeding and finishing property, Manners Creek.

The agreement continues an extraordinary six-month period of NT property transactions, after a lengthy period of near dormancy, as outlined in this earlier article.

No price has been disclosed, but earlier the vendors were asking $15 million, a pre-sale listing article suggested.

Manners Creek is located just across the Northern Territory border, 270km west of from Mt Isa between Tobermorey and Lake Nash stations in the Barkly region.

The deal includes almost 680,000ha of country, plus 11,000 predominantly Red Brahman and Droughtmaster type cattle.

Vendors were Brett and Vanda Hick and family from Julia Creek, in Queensland’s northwest.

The sale included 11,000 Red Brahman and Droughtmaster type cattle

The sale included 11,000 Red Brahman and Droughtmaster type cattle

Manners Creek will currently run around 16,000 head, in a low-cost breeding operation, being fenced into just six main paddocks.

The country is a balance of open and semi-open gidyea with a good mixture of native pasture including Mitchell and Flinders grass, buffel and spinifex plus a wide range of seasonal herbage. A number of creeks flow through the property, giving flood-out country, including Manners Creek from which the property takes it name.

The country is watered by 37 bores pumped from a combination of solar and diesel motors to troughs and tanks.  The vendors have done a lot of development work over the past 15 years, but impending owners the Gibson family see further development potential, especially in provision of further waters on the holding’s western side.

The purchase will add significant breeding capacity for the Gibson family’s operations, including Bulloo Downs and Gunnadora in Queensland’s far western Quilpie region, Dynover Downs near Euro, Sandringham west of Bedourie, plus country near Bollon, and a feedlot and farming aggregation near Dalby.

Mick Gibson said part of the attraction was the location, providing reasonable access to the northern live export market out of Darwin, if market forces made that option attractive. Currently the Gibson’s nearest property is Sandringham, 500km further southeast, being too far south to effectively service live export.

 

  • Agents were Ray White Rural’s Bruce Douglas and Peter Dowling.

 

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