Pedigree Riverina Merino sheep station listed for a pretty shilling

About $40 million will be sought for the 35,000-hectare Uardry sheep farm near Hay, which produced “Hallmark”, the ram featured on the Australian shilling from 1938 to 1966.

The farm, located on the Murrumbidgee River in the NSW Southern Riverina, is being sold by the Black family, which has owned it for nearly 40 years.

The sales process is being managed by Bill Russell from property advisors Russell Harvey & Co.

A sales agent is expected to be appointed shortly, with the sale expected to be finalised within the next six months.

The property includes 1,680 hectares of irrigation, with permitted capacity for expansion of a further 470 hectares, as well as farming and agricultural enterprises.

It produces annual revenue of $5 million and has an active client base of more than 350.

The farm sells more than 1,000 rams annually and exports to all major Merino-growing areas throughout the world.

In August this year, one of its Sims Uardry Poll rams was named Best Ram in the Shed in a field of 340 Merino and Dohne rams at the 2011 Hamilton Sheepvention

Managing director Graeme Black says the decision to sell Uardry was not taken lightly.

“We have always ensured that Uardry is at the forefront of the Australian sheep and wool industry and hope that it will continue to be so for many years to come.”

The Black family is in the process of selling all of its rural property and business interests.

In 2005 the Blacks secured $30 million for Yanga, an 80,000-hectare holding that sold to the state government after 86 years of ownership.

The property, near Balranald in the state's southwest, became a national park.

It had its original drop-log homestead, built after Yanga (then known as Tala) was acquired in the 1830s by William Charles Wentworth.

It was reputedly home to one of the first telephones in Australia, connected by Alexander Graham Bell's nephew between the homestead and the shearing sheds.

By the 1880s, it spanned 160,000 hectares and carried 150,000 sheep and 2,000 cattle. The property follows the Murrumbidgee River for 160 kilometres and includes a 17,000-hectare river red gum forest. Only about 10% of the land is cropped, with the rest in its natural state.

The Blacks retained a small parcel of Yanga.