It was a need for more country – at an affordable price – that propelled Geoff Vickers some 30 years ago to up stumps from his then base on the Liverpool Plains and head further north.
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He found what he was looking for in “Teralba”, a 2030ha (5016ac) parcel of rich floodplain country in the Gwydir Valley just down-river from Moree.
The property will go to auction in Moree on April 27 with price expectations of around $8 million, unless sold beforehand.
Situated 20 kilometres north-west of Moree where it straddles the Gingham Channel, “Teralba” comprises generally level country of alluvial brown loams.
Of the total area, about 1255ha has been developed for dryland farming and a further 185ha for irrigation, leaving a balance of 590ha for grazing and infrastructure.
The property is EU accredited and carries normally about 150 breeders, growing progeny to EU market weights, supplemented in favourable seasons by fattening of bought-in weaners.
Apart from the Gingham Channel, which carries regulated flows leaving permanent waterholes, the property’s 20 main paddocks are watered by troughs fed by three equipped bores.
The irrigation country, which has grown cotton in the past but more typically sunflowers or sorghum, consists of four fields laid out for flood irrigation and protected by a levee bank.
Water is supplied by a bore (250,000 l/hr) supplemented at times by overland flows captured in a 360 megalitre storage dam. The 170ML bore licence will be available to a successful purchaser.
A comfortable four-bedroom homestead erected in the 1990s by the present owner is set amid established lawns and gardens with a double garage.
Working structures include a four-bay steel machinery shed, a three-bay workshop, steel cattle yards with round yard and RPM crush, and four cone-bottomed silos of 130 tonnes total capacity.
