Jemalong Station - A Lachlan Jewel

From there, it’s just a few kilometres to the main entrance ramp of Jemalong Station – the historic pastoral property whose mellifluous name is now shared by so much else. The name is supposedly derived from the local Aboriginal word for platypus, and if so, it’s oddly appropriate, because while that mammal baffled early European settlers with its weird mix of physical attributes, so Jemalong Station tends to defy easy classification.  

In its time, the famous Lachlan River property has been home to stud and commercial sheep, beef cattle and horses; dairying; broadacre and intensive cropping; irrigated lucerne and citrus. Under its most recent ownership of the Kahlbetzer family, it’s also been the home ground of the internationally recognised Jemalong Polo Club, and a solar power generation project.

In short, as Bryan Goldsmith - the former general manager, agriculture, of the Kahlbetzers’ Twynam Group – sums it up, “Jemalong” has proven itself over many years an “ideal mixed farm”. Not that the term “mixed farm” is usually applied to a vast riverine aggregation of 13,387 hectares (33,065 acres), but in the case of “Jemalong” the tag is probably justified.

The station has notched up a rich and varied history since the land it occupies was first traversed by Europeans in 1817, when John Oxley led his first exploratory expedition down the Lachlan River. It was first recorded as a station holding in 1839, when its squatting licence was held by Thomas Arkell of Bathurst. Later licence holders included the flawed entrepreneur Benjamin Boyd, and pioneer pastoralist William Lee.

In the early 1880s the property was acquired by Norman Gatenby, under whose inspired management “Jemalong” became a national talking-point, before passing into a succession of company ownerships: Australian Estates, British Tobacco and Twynam. And now the famous station is embarking on a new corporate phase following its handover last month from Twynam to a Netherlands-based investment group, Optifarm Pty Ltd.

The new Dutch owners, who also bought the adjoining “Jemalong Citrus” orchard property of 360ha (originally part of the main station), intend to increase the area under high-value permanent plantings. Jemalong Station and “Jemalong Citrus” were offered for sale by tender in February, along with “Merrowie” at Hillston, as the final play in Twynam’s phased exit – after nearly 50 years - from Australian broadacre agriculture. 

It says something about Jemalong Station that it was one of the first Australian acquisitions by Twynam’s Argentina-based founder, John D. Kahlbetzer, and among the last to be sold. “Jemalong” was a property of 10,173ha when Kahlbetzer bought it in 1979.

Subsequent additions of “Wilbertroy”, “Halliday”, “Waree” and “Dowra” built it up to 14,077ha, before the citrus farm was hived off in 2005, and more recently the Vast Solar energy farm. Under Twynam ownership the property was initially fully stocked with sheep – around 30,000 head, comprising a Merino flock plus crossbred lambs sent from “Merrowie” for fattening. When wool went sour in the 1970s the production emphasis switched to a mix of cattle and grain growing, in varying proportions as dictated by markets and seasons, supplemented by opportunity lamb trading.

By the time of its sale earlier this year, “Jemalong” was carrying 5666 head of stud and commercial cattle and cropping about 2000ha, but five years earlier it ran half as many cattle and cropped 6000ha. Kahlbetzer bought “Jemalong” in 1979 as one of a “job lot” of well-known properties then being offloaded by Amatil (formerly British Tobacco) in the wind-up of its pastoral investments. 

Other properties involved in this mega-sale were “The Mount” at Forbes, “Buttabone” and “Oxley” at Warren, “Mungadal” and “Steam Plains” in the Riverina and “Narra Allen” at Boorowa. Amatil had acquired “Jemalong” in 1961 when, as British Tobacco, the company was embarking on a major diversification into agriculture, as a hedge against a likely health-induced downturn in demand for cigarettes.

Earlier that year, it had bought the 30,000ha Glenrock Station in the Upper Hunter as the first of what would become a nationwide portfolio of 18 properties, trading as Naroo Pastoral Company. “Jemalong” at that time was a somewhat smaller but still substantial property of about 8800ha, which is still remembered fondly today by Naroo’s former property supervisor, Bill Kingsford-Smith. “It’s one of the nicest properties I’ve known – not a bad acre on it,” he said. 

By the mid-1960s, “Jemalong” under Naroo’s ownership was running 32,000 Merino sheep and about 1000 head of cattle, the latter including a dairy herd of some 400 Friesian cows. At its peak the “Jemalong” dairy was the second-biggest in NSW, although today the brick building that once throbbed to a twice-daily milking serves a very different purpose as a stable for polo horses.

AS KINGSFORD-SMITH remembers it, “Jemalong” under Naroo management grew about 800ha of wheat and also fattened large numbers of home-bred first-cross lambs. 

He said that in addition to their customary station staff of overseers, station hands and jackaroos, the property’s managers relied for day-to-day information on a canny old Aboriginal stockman, Billy Bell.

“Billy had a horse and sulky in which he would drive around every day, checking on everything, and he’d tell us what needed doing.” 

Until he recently moved to Sydney, Bill and his wife Elisabeth lived in retirement at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, where coincidentally there remain other links to “Jemalong”. A weathered grave in the Blackheath cemetery stands as a memorial to N.A. (Norman) Gatenby, the “squire” of Jemalong Station for 30 years before illness forced his retirement to the mountains in 1908. 

He built a house at Blackheath he named “Jemalong”, and although the original Gatenby house is long gone, the handsome brick house that replaced it in the 1930s retains the name. When he left Forbes, Gatenby reluctantly handed the management of “Jemalong” – and that of his other famous station, “Raby” at Warren – to his woolbroker and mortgagee, Australian Estates.

 After Gatenby’s death in 1923, that company took over all Gatenby’s interests in both “Jemalong” and “Raby”, adding them to a national pastoral portfolio which eventually encompassed some 30 properties.

 In 1926 the management of “Jemalong” was taken over by J.H. (Jim) McColl, who had previously managed “Burra Burra” for many years. He remained at “Jemalong” until his retirement in 1937. 

Although part of the Australian Estates pastoral empire, the former Gatenby stations retained a separate identity under the trading name of NSW Pastoral Company, which was registered in 1927. Under Estates’ ownership, “Jemalong” continued to be run primarily as a sheep station, although instead of Gatenby’s Merinos, the breeding program switched to Corriedales, and fat lambs. 

A contemporary snapshot of the station during this period was provided by a newspaper report of a visit to “Jemalong” by the NSW Governor, Lord Wakehurst, in 1943. 

At that time, the property covered 13,200ha and carried 21,000 Corriedale ewes producing 17,000 lambs, the latter including 8000 fats that were sold direct to the local Daroobalgie freezing works. 

The annual woolclip was about 1000 bales, and the property had 2000ha under lucerne (240ha irrigated), from which 400 tons of hay was despatched each year to the company’s other NSW properties.

Apart from the manager, A.K. McIntosh, the property employed a full-time workforce of 30 men, plus as many again at haymaking time, and at annual shearing. It was during the Estates’ ownership era that “Jemalong” – owing to its size, and its foreign ownership - became an obvious target for soldier settlement at the end of the Second World War.

In 1949 the government resumed 3178ha from the eastern side of the station to create 14 soldiers’ blocks, the ballot for which attracted 242 applicants. 

Twelve years later the company sold “Jemalong” to British Tobacco, and in 1975 – with pastoral stocks at their lowest ebb - it sold its remaining properties along with its agency division to CSR. 

The old pastoral companies may have gone, but at “Jemalong”, at least, it is still possible to gain a sense of how things were during its century of renown as a leading sheep station. 

Still standing beside the Lachlan, amid venerable river gums and peppercorn trees, is the gracious station homestead incorporating an original pise section dating from the 1860s.

Gatenby extended the original building with timber sections in the 1880s and apart from minor alterations carried out in the 1970s and restumping in the early 2000s, it’s still much as Gatenby left it. The homestead served as a manager’s residence during its Estates and Naroo ownership periods, but when Kahlbetzers took over it reverted to its original role as the “squatter’s castle”, albeit for visitation only. 

Bryan Goldsmith, the senior Twynam employee on site, lived instead in another homestead on the “Dowra” section of the property. Faithfully preserved by the Kahlbetzers, the main homestead boasts many period touches such as an entrance hallway, screened verandahs, wide cypress floorboards, breezeways and open fireplaces.

The original kitchen is still in use, though no longer providing meals for an extended station community, whereby jackaroos in their collars and ties dined in one room, and station-hands in another. A short walk from the homestead is the former station headquarters building that housed the office, store and a post office for the surrounding district.

Under Twynam ownership it became the main management centre for the company’s Lachlan properties, while part of it was set aside as a billiard room and showplace for assorted equine memorabilia. Built by Gatenby in the 1890s, and fitted initially with Burgon machinery, the cavernous timber woolshed where 30,000 or more sheep were shorn each year for nearly a century now stands silent. Only the imprint of a “Naroo Pastoral Company” woolbale stencil on one of the walls bears testimony to an earlier era of the station’s history, when wool was unquestionably king.

In the drought year of 1902, Jemalong Station became the focus of nationwide interest among the grazing fraternity, as a result of a bold claim made by its forthright owner, Norman Gatenby. At a so-called “smoke night” earlier that year in connection with the Forbes Show, Gatenby had told how he had been successfully feeding 15,000 sheep on the production from 300 acres (120 hectares).

As a newspaper reported at the time, ‘The information was received with undisguised incredulity, in which the Minister for Agriculture, who was present, participated.’ Undeterred, Gatenby thereupon offered to demonstrate the validity of his claim in a trial on “Jemalong” under departmental supervision. 

During four months of summer he showed how a 22.5ac (9ha) field of irrigated lucerne, divided into seven strips and cut for fodder in rotation, could support 1685 sheep – a stocking rate equivalent of 75 sheep/acre (185/ha).

The Minister, Mr Kidd, was duly impressed, as were the many graziers from all parts of the country who – after reading about it - flocked to “Jemalong” to see this remarkable feat for themselves. Dubbed at the time “the father of irrigation” on the Lachlan (in 1890 “Jemalong” was judged the best irrigated farm in NSW), Gatenby largely pioneered the growing of lucerne as an adjunct to a riverside grazing enterprise. 

By the time of the 1901-02 drought, about 180ha of “Jemalong” was laid out for irrigation from the Lachlan River, 60ha of it for winter crops and 120ha for summer fodder, mostly lucerne. Later the irrigation area was expanded, and by the time Australian Estates took over “Jemalong” in the 1920s the property had 240ha under irrigated lucerne.

Gatenby was a Tasmanian by birth, but moved to NSW as a young man in the mid-1870s when he bought a property called “Burra Burra” near Tullamore.  By 1885, when he was elected the founding president of the Condobolin Pastoral and Agricultural Association, he had bought “Jemalong”, which became his home until his forced retirement due to ill health in 1908. 

He established there the Jemalong Merino stud on Tasmanian bloodlines, exhibiting with success at Sydney and local shows, and selling flock rams to buyers as far away as the New England. With “Jemalong” and its stud performing well, Gatenby by 1896 was ready for further expansion and he found it in “Raby” at Warren, where he established Raby Merino stud on Peppin bloodlines in 1898.

By 1897 “Jemalong” was shearing some 30,000 sheep, which was consistent with the station’s long-term stocking rate of about one sheep an acre. Gatenby became a passionate advocate for lucerne and for ensilage, on which he prepared a detailed paper in 1907. 

He was also one of the early lobbyists for water conservation on the Lachlan, although he didn’t live long enough to see the (first) dam at Wyangala completed in 1935, or the Jemalong and Wyldes Plains Irrigation District opened four years later. Weakened by a paralysing condition that made it impossible for him to continue active work, he retired with his wife to the Blue Mountains in 1908, where he died aged 73.

His close friend during the final decade of his life was another retired pastoral legend, Cuthbert Featherstonehaugh, who wrote a glowing obituary on Gatenby for the Sydney Stock and Station Journal, ending as follows: 

“Kind and considerate to all, the soul of honour, he was dearly loved and revered by each and all of his many friends. His courage, fortitude, patience and endurance during all those long years (of forced retirement) were beyond words”. Featherstonehaugh outlived his friend by just two years, and their graves – just metres apart - add a poignant touch of pastoral history to the Blackheath cemetery.