Historic sheep property Warrayure in Victoria's Western District on the market for the first time in 40 years

“[The owners have] been there since the 1970s and they’re only selling now due to health reasons,” said agent Andrew Dufty, of Charles Stewart Western Victoria Hamilton.

The property – noted for its association with two pioneering families and designed by Scottish-born architect Jenkins – runs prime lambs and some cattle on its 405.5 hectares.

Mr Dufty said the property was likely to attract a mix of local buyers looking to expand their current holdings and metropolitan buyers seeking an escape from the city – although the latter might struggle with the current restrictions on movement in Melbourne.

He said there was potential for some “production upside” on the property, which benefits from a high level of water security provided by 11 dams and six bores, and its highly productive basalt soils.

“In general, properties of this type don’t come on the market that often,” Mr Dufty said. “There’s such a demand for productive land in the Western District at the moment.”

Despite the easing of drought conditions in NSW, farmers from that state seeking a move south in the hunt for more reliable rainfall might also show interest, as they had done in other recent campaigns, Mr Dufty said.

There was also potential for some of the outbuildings to be converted into farmstay-style accommodation.

“There’s certainly opportunity there because at the back of the homestead there’s an old jail, old dairy, the old stables. If somebody wanted to [convert] any of that, it’s quite separate but close enough to manage,” Mr Dufty said.

Mr Dufty said initial price expectations were between $5 million and $5.5 million but the historical value of the homestead and outbuildings made pinning down a precise figure difficult.

Rich history

The property is of historical significance to the state of Victoria and to the Southern Grampians Shire,  due to its association with two early settler families in the district and its architect, John Shanks Jenkins.

Stephen Henty commissioned Jenkins, who would later assist in designing Melbourne’s Princes Bridge and become a councillor for the City of Richmond, to build the single-storey, five-bedroom bluestone homestead on the property in about 1860.

Henty was an overstraiter – a term used to describe those who had travelled from Tasmania across the Bass Strait – to settle in the region.

According to the Victorian Heritage database, the establishment of the Warrayure homestead complex “represented the reunion of the North and South sections of the much earlier Mount Sturgeon Plains squatting run which had been subdivided in 1857, which had been settled first by Alexander Cameron”.

Outbuildings constructed at the same time – all using the same bluestone – include a woolshed, stables and coach house and a bar-windowed building thought to have been used as a jail during the property’s early years.

Heritage records show Henty lived at Warrayure until his financial collapse in 1871. The property was then sold to the Cameron family – overlanders – who kept the property until 1891.

The interiors of the house were modernised after World War II. A three-bedroom cottage, about 500 metres from the homestead, was added during the 1950s.