Mr Handbury paid $13.7 million for Chessington, a grazing property west of Naracoorte.

Paddy Handbury sells SA aggregation to local families for $33m

Larry Schlesinger|Jan 30, 2023

Paddy Handbury, a leading pastoralist and nephew of Rupert Murdoch, has raked in over $33 million after selling his family’s prized Saltbush cropping and prime lambing aggregation in South Australia’s mid-north region to five local farming businesses.

Mr Handbury, who is based in Torquay on Victoria’s Surf Coast, put the long-held 2852-hectare holding in the Booborowie-Leighton area north-east of Clare up for sale in November as part of plans to shift the family’s farming operations closer to the Lucindale region in the state’s south-east and Western Victoria, where its major land assets are based.

Father and son selling agents Geoff and Daniel Schell from Ray White Rural SA confirmed that all six properties were under contract to five local farming businesses. One family purchased two of the six properties.

“We did have an inquiry to purchase the whole aggregation, but in the end it was multi-generational farming families from the mid-north region, which purchased them individually,” Geoff Schell told The Australian Financial Review

Over 100 inquiries and 19 expressions of interests were submitted for the six properties, which Mr Handbury and his son Jack have owned and farmed for the past 27 years, growing cereals, oil seeds, legumes, hay and producing prime lamb and wool.

“Two of the buyers are quite large family businesses, and three are small- to medium-sized family businesses,” Mr Schell said.

He added that much of the transaction activity in the rural property market was being fuelled by succession planning and retirement on the one hand and the expansion of existing farming enterprises by the next generation of owners on the other.

Mr Handbury declined to comment on the successful divestment of the Saltbush aggregation, but stated in November that he was selling after buying “three cracking properties closer to home”.

“We’re keen for our son Jack and his family to move down south while his family is still young, and he can run Saltbush Ag from the expanded property aggregation around Lucindale,” Mr Handbury said at the time.

Property records show Handbury Asset Management has acquired four properties in Lucindale west of Naracoorte – three of them on Lucindale Road – for $4.1 million. Combined the properties stretch over 180 ha.

In addition, the Handburys have spent $13.7 million buying Chessington, a 668-ha grazing property at Spence, 25 km west of Naracoorte. Chessington was bought from cattle farmer Daniel Treloar and his family. Tom Pearce and Mark De Garis from TDC Livestock and Property brokered the deal.

Mr Handbury’s late mother Helen (who died in 2004) was the eldest sister of News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch, while his father Geoff, who died in 2019, was a very well-known philanthropist, grazier and radio entrepreneur.

The Handbury’s portfolio includes 214,500ha Arcoona Station near Woomera in the SA outback. The family previously owned the famous 56,000ha Collinsville sheep station near Mount Bryan, before selling it to Adelaide businessman George Millington in 2014.