Sir Graham McCamley lists central Queensland station in three portions

By Jonathan Chancellor
Monday, 20 February 2012

Sir Graham McCamley has listed his 46,863-hectare central Queensland property, Glenprairie.

Ray White Rural has instructions from McCamley, who celebrates his 80th birthday this year, that the Marlborough property be sold.

The property will be offered in three individual portions, with Oakley-Stoodleigh (13,650 hectares) and Tanderra (6539 hectares) currently forming Glenprairie West, to be offered as two lots on March 30 bare of stock and plant, followed by Glenprarie (26,678 hectares) in May on a walk-in walk-out basis, including the organic cattle herd and station plant.

The Land describes Glenprairie as arguably Australia's largest consistent supplier of weekly organic beef products to local and international markets.

The property is an hour and a half north of Rockhampton and about two hours south of Mackay.

In the 1950s, its then owner, Sir William Angliss, constructed a 25-kilometre oil erosion control bank, which McCamley has maintained so that its soil protection has been achieved. Its owners have included the Vestey family and in the early 1990s it was owned by Perth entrepreneur Robert Holmes a Court.

In 2005, McCamley and Lady (Shirley) McCamley, in partnership with Allen and Carolynne Nobbs, spent $106 million buying the 71-hectare holdings of Glenprairie, Fitzroy Vale and Lake Learmonth along with 26,000 head of cattle from Greek shipping tycoon Gregory Hadjieleftheriadis in Australia's biggest private rural property transaction.

McCamley, whose cattle operation had been based on the Tartrus station, indicated he had long coveted Glenprairie in particular.

Under the deal, McCamley took Glenprairie, and the Nobbs family took Fitzroy Vale and Lake Learmonth.

Lady McCamley died in an ultralight plane crash less than a week after announcing the initial listing of the the family's farm in early 2010.

One of the first settled and oldest stations in Central Queensland, Glenprairie was established by the explorers and pastoralists William Landsborough and Nat Buchanan.