WHEN Robert Rand bought the "Urangeline" portion of the Brookong Run from the Osborne brothers in 1864, the price was agreed on the basis of one pound ($2) for every sheep supposedly included with the property.
That amounted to a notional total of 40,000 pounds for the 107,000 acre (43,000 hectare) leasehold, based on the vendors' estimate of 40,000 sheep - equivalent to about $1 a hectare for country that would in time become prime eastern Riverina cropland.
But the story goes that when the sheep were duly mustered, the count tallied only 38,000, so Rand refused to pay more than 38,000 pounds ($76,000) - even after the missing 2000 sheep were eventually found.
Perhaps that style of hardball dealing is how the English-born Rand (after whom the nearby town is named) became a pastoral tycoon, but though he drove a hard bargain, in later life he was known also for his unobtrusive generosity.
His acquisition of "Urangeline" took his combined holding - with his adjoining home property, "Mahonga", to almost 70,000ha, making it second only in scale in the eastern Riverina to adjoining "Brookong".
This vast aggregation, bounded on the north by Urangeline Creek (which formed the border with "Brookong") stretched nearly from Urana to present-day Rand and Pleasant Hills.
Indeed, in their 1890s heyday, "Urangeline" and "Brookong" together accounted for just under half the total sheep running on the 37 stations filing stock returns in the Urana Pastures Protection Board district.
Having annexed "Urangeline", Rand upped the stocking level by 100,000 sheep, undertook major water conservation works and built the first stage of the massive woolshed which remains a district landmark today.
The shed was later extended to accommodate more room for classing and pressing, and in 1889 - like neighbouring "Brookong" - was fitted with Wolseley shearing machines, 75 stands of them in three rows.
Three years later, amid plummeting wool prices and looming depression, the "Urangeline" shed recorded its biggest shearing, when 260,000 sheep were shorn for a woolclip of 5500 bales.
Rand died in 1894 and "Urangeline" passed into the hands of his estate, as part of Mahonga Company, where it remained until 1906 when it was partitioned off as Urangeline Company, in the control of Rand's nephew, George Jackson, as managing partner.
It was Jackson who appreciated the country's suitability for cultivation, and set in train the subdivision of the huge station to accommodate the growing clamour for closer settlement.
As he later told a reporter from the Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, "I recognised that we would have to go with the times. This class of country could not be kept shut up from agriculture."
Not that it was a dud for sheep breeding either.
The Urangeline Merino stud established on the property in 1886 was by 1912 showing grand champions at Sydney, and exporting rams to South Africa.
But mixed farming was the country's future, and after demonstrating the country's potential for wheat growing on the company's own land, Jackson in 1910 began a selling program which by 1915 had seen some 15,000ha of "Urangeline" sold off in 60 blocks to croppers.
That year's harvest saw 140,000 bags (about 12,000 tonnes) of wheat delivered to rail by settlers from about 8000ha of new cropping land.
As well as making the land available, Jackson encouraged a co-operative spirit among the settlers.
He ran a wheat pool for their benefit, provided finance in drought times and organised bulk purchases of farm inputs.
A man ahead of his time, Jackson - who controlled operations on "Urangeline" from his home on "Mahonga" - was one of the first in the district to own a car, and in 1914 he brought the first aeroplane to the Riverina: a French two-seater Caudron bi-plane.
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