AACo has sold the central Queensland cattle station ‘Meteor Downs’ to the Swiss mining company, Xstrata. Meteor Downs is 17,000 ha 40km SE of Springsure (between Emerald & Roma), and it was purchased in 1990 to run the AACo’s Brahman and Santa Gertrudis studs. In recent years it has been running Wagyu cattle, and growing forage crops for the on-site feedlot. Meteor Downs is a well respected property with a relatively reliable rainfall and good soil and it is situated relatively close to some other AACo-owned properties. Previous owners of Meteor Downs include James ‘hungry’ Tyson, British Tobacco and Nelson Bunker Hunt (Waxahachie Pty Ltd).
The $21.6 million from the sale of Meteor Downs will be used on other AACo cattle stations and put towards the meatworks the AACo is planning to build in Darwin. The sale price is a ‘mining’ price – well above the property’s value as an agricultural business, especially considering Meteor Downs is being sold to Xstrata bare of stock and plant (which are to be transferred to other AACo properties). It’s an excellent outcome for the AACo (who would have been powerless to stop the mining on their land anyway, and forced into a ‘mining agreement’), but a tragedy for the pastoral industry and for future generations. Although Meteor Downs will presumably continue to run at least some cattle because Mount Isa Mines (MIM) developed a pastoral company called Colinta Holdings, in charge of running cattle on some of the pastoral properties purchased by MIM. Ownership of Colinta Holdings transferred to Xstrata when the Switzerland-based company purchased MIM a few years ago.
Properties owned and run by Brisbane-based Colinta Holdings include the NT cattle station McCarthur River, the site of an Xstrata zinc mine (Cape Crawford – near Borroloola). Queensland cattle stations owned by Colinta include Haslington (Mt Isa; apparently also spelt ‘Haslingden’), Mt Luce (north of Bowen at Abbot Point, Australia’s most northerly coal port – it handles coal from central Qld mines and the terminal is run by Xstrata); plus Collinsville (central Qld) properties Kerale, Heidelberg, Havilah and Byerwen. Colinta Holdings also owns farms in NSW, presumably all in the Singleton coal mining region of the Hunter Valley: Bobadeen, Reedy Valley, Magoolah and Singleton. Colinta Holdings also owned one of the largest cattle stations in the Richmond/Maxwelton region for many years, Saxby Downs, but it was sold to Alister McClymont’s AJM Pastoral Company in 2008. Colinta would certainly own other properties in areas where mines are being developed, eg around Wandoan, however these are not listed on the company website – Charbray.com. Along with the most common northern breed, Brahmans, Colinta properties run Charbray and Charolais cattle. Running these more unusual breeds in northern Australia would be a handy way of discouraging any from accidentally ending up hanging in the coolrooms of neighbouring properties. There is an old saying that ‘cattle from next door always taste sweeter’ – and cattle owned by large companies, especially mining companies, are usually viewed as extra tasty by nearby residents.
Gary Johncock was the manager of Colinta Holdings for many years, and presumably still is (there’s very little publicly available/easily located information on Colinta Holdings).
Xstrata obviously wouldn’t be running a pastoral arm purely for income reasons in fact I would have thought running a sideline pastoral business would have been more of an annoyance than anything. Presumably the primary reason must be as a PR excercise – so local landowners can’t complain to the government that good pastoral land, owned by the mining giant, is being unused.
Coal mined from Meteor Downs will be taken by rail to Gladstone port.
As the central Queensland bumper stickers say ‘you can’t eat coal’. In the last 2 weeks I’ve driven the 1800 km from Townsville to Tamworth and back, and passed several of the Australian Agricultural Company’s purchases over the last two decades: Meteor Downs Station (Springsure) and the Wylarah aggregation (near Surat; consisting of 6 properties – Wylarah, Cadny Downs, Talaverah, Newington, Borah and Didgeridoo), and not far from the turnoffs to Goonoo Farm (south of Comet) and Glentana (west of Springsure). It is exceedingly depressing to see so much of Australia’s very best food growing land stretching from the Emerald region down into northern NSW, being dug up by mining companies (mostly overseas owned). And mining doesn’t even mean good quality buildings are built in nearby towns any more – if mining ceased overnight, there would be absolutely no local evidence of the many millions of dollars worth of minerals that had been dug up and shipped away – other than potholed roads, gaping holes in the ground and rusting equipment.
It’s heartbreaking to see good agricultural land decimated, Australia has so relatively little of it. Future generations will not thank those responsible.
Tags: Living in the country and remote areas, Australian cattle stations, Australian Beef Industry, Pastoral companies, Rural properties for sale and ownership, Conservation and the environment, Rural foreign investment, Image of the bush, Australian agriculture