For more than a century, the Western Riverina station known as “Oxley” (not to be confused with the other “Oxley” on the lower Macquarie River) was held by successive generations of the pioneering McFarland family – but no more.
In January the 10,000-hectare Oxley Station changed hands – sold by Bob McFarland to Ian McLachlan, the Adelaide-based pastoralist who owns a large aggregation based on the former Tyson property, “Tupra”, just across the Lachlan River from “Oxley”.
As well as “Oxley”, the McLachlans bought most of “Geramy”, an adjoining property owned by Bob’s brother Graham, leaving Graham retaining a block of about 1600ha.
Their cousin, Derek McFarland, still holds the historic homestead of “Thelangerin”, bought in 1873 from Alexander McVean by Robert and his brother Andrew McFarland.
The McFarland brothers had previously held country at Barooga on the Murray River, and moved north to establish a dynasty on the less-intensively settled Lower Lachlan.
It was Andrew’s son, Robert Percival McFarland (the present Bob’s grandfather), who added “Oxley” to “Thelangerin” in 1909, then held by AML and F, who had taken it over from the trustees of Thomas Darchy in about 1890.
Darchy had held “Oxley” since the 1850s.
Originally known as “Thelangerin West”, the property now known as “Oxley” is thought to have started life in the 1830s as two 640-acre (260ha) blocks taken up by James Phelps. The original cottage beside the Lachlan, built in 1834 by Phelps from red gum slabs, still stands and forms part of the historic “Oxley” homestead complex. Historian R.B. Ronald, in his 1960 book, The Riverina, relates it was only when Darchy took over the property and erected a new homestead, which he called “Oxley House”, the property itself took on the “Oxley” name, distinguishing it from adjoining “Thelangerin East” (thereafter known simply as “Thelangerin”).
Oxley was chosen to honour the memory of the colonial surveyor/explorer John Oxley, the first European to penetrate the Lower Lachlan in 1817.
As well as “Oxley”, Darchy held leases at “Tarcoola” and “Pan Ban” further west, and the movement of sheep between “Oxley” and his western leases landed Darchy in court in 1865 after James Tyson of “Tupra” brought trespass action.
Apparently Darchy was not averse to leaving his sheep to graze his larger neighbour’s back-country pastures for several months if he thought he could get away with it, but on this occasion Tyson won the day.
While Tyson and his kinsmen – whose “Tupra”/“Juanbung” aggregation at its 1870s peak encompassed more than 200,000ha – were for many years the pre-eminent landholders in the region, the McFarlands at one time were also a force to be reckoned with.
Andrew’s four sons – Harold, Frank, Eric and Andrew, trading as McFarland Brothers – held in addition to “Oxley” and “Thelangerin” the freehold runs of “Gelam” and “Canoon” along with the Western Lands leases “Culpataroo”, “Norwood” and “Mallawa” – a total area of some 80,000ha on which they ran on average 50,000 sheep, plus cattle in season.
The present-day Bob McFarland was born on “Geramy”, which his father, Andrew, had bought in 1938 from the Tysons, and managed along with “Oxley”. After leaving school he jackarooed for two years at Blackall (Qld) before returning in 1968 to settle at “Oxley” with his new bride, Errolly (nee Collins, from a North Queensland pioneering family). “Oxley” had then come down to a holding of 10,000ha, following Andrew’s death in 1983, after which the property was split in two between Bob and his brother. Bob says while 10,000ha was a comfortable living area (with a stocking rate of about one sheep to 2ha) in the years when wool prices and seasons were favourable, from 1990 until relatively recently, either one or both of these variables has been at odds. His son Andrew, then 20, joined him on the property in 1993, but after 10 years – despite a dramatic makeover of the Merino flock – the point was reached where “Oxley” could no longer support two families. Andrew left and now lives with wife Vanessa in Wagga Wagga, working as a design engineer with Proways, the well-known stockyard manufacturer. His sister, Fiona, settled near Orange with her husband David Coleman.
Having sold his stock and plant (excluding the 1939 De Soto coupe he is restoring) and packed up the contents of the rambling homestead, Bob has now also headed to Orange, where he intends to buy a small lifestyle block.
His decision to sell “Oxley” was triggered by the premature death of wife Errolly in 2014 from cancer, and a growing belief that viability on semi-arid pastoral country today demands a scale of operation beyond the scope of a “family farmer”.
“It’s sad, because it means we are seeing the era of closer settlement reversing, as farms are bought up by corporates and governments for national parks,” he said.
Bob was satisfied “going out on a high”, with prices of $110-plus paid for lines of his prized flock of Riverina multi-purpose Merinos, bred up from a Peppin base with Rambouillet and SRS infusions since the mid-1990s. The on-property clearing sale in November drew a huge crowd of more than 400, all keen to pick over the accumulations of a century of one-family station ownership.
For the new owner, Ian McLachlan, buying “Oxley” and the adjoining “Geramy” country fulfilled a long-held desire to round off his family’s Lower Lachlan holdings.
He said he would manage the country conservatively and respect its heritage. As with “Tupra”, previously held only by Tysons and later, A.T. Creswick, he will become the third dynastic owner of “Oxley”, after the McFarland and Darchy tenures.
His attention to heritage on his own “Tupra”, where he has undertaken wide-ranging restoration and preservation work on historic station buildings, suggests Bob McFarland will be able to derive some comfort from knowing “Oxley” remains in caring hands.