Titans of ‘Tinapagee’

These days a property at Wanaaring would more likely go to auction in Bourke, Dubbo or Sydney, but in the late 1800s it was Victorian money – much of it speculative – that fuelled pastoral investment west of the Darling.

“Tinapagee” – a name derived from an Aboriginal word of unknown meaning, and pronounced “tin-AP-agee” – had already had several Victorian owners.

It was about to get another.

And during the tenure of the incoming owner, Richard Feehan, the station would arguably enjoy its “golden” years, before the reverses of the 1890s claimed another victim and brought the good times to an inglorious end.

Today “Tinapagee” survives as the name of a 21,000 hectare portion of the former station, owned by Stuart and Sherree Forsythe, who bought it in 2004 as part of a 51,808ha aggregation now for sale as Braemar Station.

The Forsythes have had a good run on “Braemar”, helped by four floods of the Cuttaburra Creek system which fans out through their country, but for educational reasons they moved to the North Coast in 2010, where Stuart now has a macadamia farm.

They will have regrets in parting with “Braemar”, not only because it has proved itself outstanding sheep and cattle fattening country (with goat harvesting as an annual bonus), but because of its rich history.

It’s on the Forsythes’ portion of “Tinapagee” that the remains can still be seen of the original woolshed, where 40 blade shearers once peeled the wool from 120,000 sheep, and next to it, the station wool scour.

Across the Paroo River from the old woolshed and scour – on a small block called “Old Tinapagee” owned by a Victorian syndicate – are the remains of the original homestead and its once-extensive outbuildings.

All bear testimony to a time when “Tinapagee” was one of the handful of vast station properties that once accounted for all the land from Wanaaring to the Queensland border.

Stretching east and west in roughly equal measure from its 30 kilometre frontage to the Paroo, the “Tinapagee” offered to bidders that Melbourne day in 1880 was a run of 740,000 acres (about 300,000ha).

Other well-known stations of the day immediately adjoining it included “Brindingabba”, “Talyealye”, “Waverley Downs”, “Berawinnia Downs”, “Elsinora”, and “Wanaaring” – all today much reduced, or obliterated, by closer settlement.

It was the Melbourne woolbroking partnership of McComas and Heaney whose name was the first to be associated with “Tinapagee” – they took up the land as a cattle run sometime in the mid-1860s.

Burke and Wills had not long before passed through the area on their ill-fated journey north, and a young Ernest Giles – later to make his name as an explorer in Central Australia – was at that time making forays into the unsettled lands west of the Darling in search of likely pastoral country.

“Tinapagee” was one of the outposts of civilisation when Giles reportedly staggered across its welcome threshold after a gruelling and unsuccessful expedition, to be taken care of by Mr McComas (who became a lifelong friend).

By the late 1870s “Tinapagee” was in the hands of another Melbourne-based partnership, Fitzgerald and Co, and stocking-up with sheep to cash in on the booming demand for wool, now accessible to markets thanks to the advent of river transport.

This partnership comprised Maurice (M.P.) Fitzgerald (who later bought Fort Bourke Station, with two relatives) and two other Melburnians, Richard Feehan and Andrew Tobin.

Tobin, who had started out in a livery stable business in Melbourne, used his “Tinapagee” involvement as a springboard for his better-known venture: the aggregation of lands at Coonamble to form mighty Wingadee Station.

The Paroo country also proved a useful breeding-ground for Tobin in stocking “Wingadee” – one 1878 press report of stock movements tells of 18,000 sheep from “Tinapagee” en route to “Wingadee”.

But it was Feehan, the high-profile Melburnian whose City Arms Hotel had prospered during the goldrush era, who would make a lasting mark at “Tinapagee”, and regard it as more than a speculative throw of the dice.

Feehan had already dabbled in pastoral affairs closer to home – one of his farms was the site of what later became the Moonee Valley Racecourse (where his descendants still hold an annual family reunion) – but like so many of his boomtime peers, he hankered after bigger things.

“Tinapagee” was only one of his outback (and ultimately doomed) pastoral ventures, albeit the one closest to his heart.

Shortly after buying “Tinapagee” Feehan acquired the 320,000ha “Beechal Creek” aggregation in western Queensland, near the head of the Paroo.

When Feehan took over “Tinapagee” following its 1880 auction to wind up the Fitzgerald partnership, it was stocked with 58,000 “first-class” sheep.

Feehan immediately upped the ante with the purchase of 14,000 young ewes from Gunbar Station at Hay and by 1887 was able to offer for sale 14,000 wether hoggets, and by 1893 was shearing 130,000 sheep.

The property also carried a prized herd of Shorthorn cattle in a stud founded by Feehan in 1883 upon the dispersal of a noted Gippsland herd.

In 1886 he staged a much-talked-about production sale in Bourke, offering 150 head of stud bulls and females to widespread competition.

Feehan also bred many horses for the Melbourne sales, after the railway came to Bourke in 1885, and always drove the annual consignment to the railhead himself – an assignment he regarded as his yearly holiday treat.

The once-grand and garden-fringed, 12-room homestead of which little now remains (it was destroyed by fire in the early 1940s) dates from Feehan’s time, as do the 40-stand (blade) shearing shed and wool scour.

Pressed bales of scoured wool were loaded onto camel trains and transported to Tilpa for loading on a river steamer to start the long journey to London sales, or later to Bourke, for loading on rail.

In short, the 1880s were a high time for the big western stations, as a nostalgic letter-writer to The Sydney Morning Herald recalled, looking back from the much-changed perspective of 1924.

The letter-writer, using the pseudonym “Paroo”, referred in glowing and wistful terms to the “jolly times” of yore, and the men of mark who had presided over them: “Feehan of ‘Tinapagee’, Killen of ‘Elsinora’, Hebden of ‘Wanaaring’ and many others”.

By the mid-1890s, however, the party was over.

“Tinapagee”, like so many of the boomtime pastoral runs, was in the hands of its creditor – in this case, Dalgety and Co.

But although Dalgety now called the shots, the station continued to be managed by Feehan’s son Maurice, who had worked on “Tinapagee” since the 1870s.

Maurice left in 1901, and two years later – following the trail of his father’s former partner – was appointed manager of “Wingadee”, where he remained until his death in 1932.

(Nor did the foreclosure sour relations between the Feehan family and Dalgety: another of Feehan’s sons became a wool auctioneer for the company in Melbourne!)

Like other mortgagee holders of western leases in the troubled early 1900s, Dalgety wanted nothing more than to be rid of its pastoral assets, and in 1910 a “white knight” rode up in the shape of Sidney Kidman.