IT'S been 10 years since such a big, diverse station in the Hay district has been put up for auction.

Five separate holdings were combined to create one, but driving around the expanse of cropping and grazing country, it is hard to pick that this wasn't just always one station.

TORONGA

  • HAY
  • Size: 34,500ha
  • Property type: cropping, grazing
  • Auction: December 10
  • Price: about $8 million
  • Agents: Elders Griffith and Meares & Associates, Sydney
  • Phone: (02) 6969 2900 or (02) 9262 6884

Elders Griffith real estate manager John Dalton said the quality of the improvements on Toronga were what made the station special.

Infrastructure for the livestock enterprise includes a laneway system for moving stock, new cattle yards and an extensive tank and trough system to provide stock water around the station.

"Fencing and watering points are excellent and the working improvements for both cattle and sheep are second to none," Mr Dalton said.

Toronga once played home to a pure Angus herd, created initially from cattle bought from Cowl Cowl Station at Hillston, and later supplemented with bulls most recently from Lawsons Angus.

In the past few years it has run between 1600-2000 breeding females and there were plans to make more extensive use of the feedlot and feeding pens, which were set up to finish the station's steer weaners to feedlot entry weight.

The feedlot, which includes a number of feeding pens, troughs and a bunker system to store feed, was built close to the cattle yards.

Toronga's herd was dispersed in October in order to offer a destocked station to prospective buyers, Mr Dalton said. The estimated livestock carry capacity of Toronga is 20,000 dry sheep equivalents.

While the station may be best known for its livestock, it has also run an extensive dryland and irrigated cropping operation.

This year, the station will produce seed oats, wheat, barley and beans but in the past it has also grown canola, maize, safflower and rice.

Toronga has about 2550ha of country laid out to irrigation, including 1241ha to row crops, 750ha in bankless channels and 560ha to border-check irrigation.

The station has a bore with an 811-megalitre entitlement, plus supplementary licence and two storage dams with a total capacity of 2600 megalitres.

The buyer will also have an option to buy 4571 megalitres of general security Murrumbidgee River entitlements, held on a joint authority, plus 1200 megalitres of supplementary entitlements.

Stock water is supplied by a 447-megalitre stock and domestic water licence from the Murrumbidgee River.

There is also 19 megalitres available from the Wah Wah irrigation scheme.

Mr Dalton said Toronga was best described as "true Hay Plains country", with flood-out creeks and some Box Swamp areas.

"There is a range of country on Toronga, from red loams and clays to some lighter country, and the balance makes it an excellent pastoral property," he said.

There are extensive improvements on the station.

They include a 40m x 40m workshop-office complex, two machinery sheds, about 5500 tonnes of grain storage, an 80-tonne weighbridge, hay shed with the capacity to store 1200 round bales, five silos and grain bunkers at the feedlot, an eight stand shearing shed, steel sheep yards, three-stand crutching sheds with another set of yards, cattle yards, manager's accommodation, shearers' quarters and other shedding.

The main homestead is a four-bedroom house with a pool.