Billionaire Gina Rinehart has bought Fossil Downs, one of Western Australia’s oldest family-run cattle stations, to add to her growing agricultural empire.
It is the first time the 400,000-hectare station – located at the fork of the Fitzroy and Margaret rivers about 30km from Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley – has been sold in its 133-year history.
The mining magnate’s company, Hancock Prospecting, finalised the sale on Friday. The sale price has not been disclosed, but the asking price was rumoured to be about $30m.
Real estate agent Malcolm French, who handled the sale for the owners, John and Annette Henwood, wouldn’t confirm that figure but said, “we have achieved our objective”.
A spokesman for Hancock Prospecting said the property would form part of a growing agricultural portfolio, which includes a stake in WA-owned dairy company Bannister Downs, a $25-million herd of wagyu beef cattle, and a 50% stake in two other Kimberley cattle stations, Liveringa and Nerrima, which was purchased for $40 million last year.
Graham Laitt, whose company Milne Agrigroup is a joint partner in the Liveringa station beef venture, told Guardian Australia that the Fossil Downs cattle would be managed with the cattle from the other two stations and would bring Rinehart’s herd in WA up to 60,000 head.
Laitt said the aim was to build up the cattle herd enough to justify re-opening a mothballed abattoir in the Kimberley, which would allow the company to export locally-killed beef directly to China.
Annette Henwood is the granddaughter of Dan MacDonald, who signed the original pastoral lease for Fossil Downs for £25 a year in 1882, prompting his brothers, William and Charles MacDonald, to set off on the longest overland cattle drive in Australia’s history.
The MacDonald brothers and four others, including members of the MacKenzie family, who co-owned the station in its early days, took four years to trek the 5,600km distance from Goulburn, NSW, to Fossil Downs. They left with about 700 cattle and 60 horses, and arrived in 1886 with 327 cattle and 13 horses.
The Henwoods took over the property from Annette’s father, Bill MacDonald, who built the current homestead to such a high standard that it was featured in the Australian Women’s Weekly as “a splendid heritage” in 1952.
Speaking to the West Australian in May, Annette said selling the property made her “feel like an absolute traitor,” adding “I never wanted to be the MacDonald who quit”.
But French told Guardian Australia that the couple, who are now in their 70s, simply couldn’t manage the property any longer.
“It’s been highly emotional, all the way along,” the estate agent said. “This is not a case of someone wanting to cash in, it’s purely retirement. I suppose they’ll buy a home in Broome or somewhere in the Kimberley. They can’t stand the cold down here [in Perth].”
French said it was one of the most significant properties in the state and one of the last stations of its kind in Australia.
“The word ‘icon’ is used quite a lot but in the true sense of the word this is an iconic farm,” he said.
Elsia Archer, a friend of the Henwoods and president of the Derby/West Kimberley shire, told Guardian Australia that the sale of the station to “yet another corporation” felt like the end of a chapter in the Kimberley’s history.
“It’s an era that we’re losing,” Archer said. “It’s really quite sad.”
Like any property in the Kimberley, Fossil Downs has a mixed history. The same Women’s Weekly article that praised the pioneering spirit of the MacDonalds also praised them for being at the “forefront of a new deal for the natives, who are too often regarded as a superior type of working beast”.
The Gooniyandi people were granted native title over a large section of the station in 2013 after a 15-year campaign. Muludja, a remote Aboriginal community of about 100 people, is located on the station about 2km from the homestead.
