JILLAMATONG is a productive grazing property in the renowned high-rainfall pocket of Mountain Creek.

The 930ha property has been held by the Plunkett family since 1918 and boasts water as a feature.

    JILLAMATONG
  • HOLBROOK
  • Property: grazing, cropping
  • Size: 930ha
  • Auction: December 11 at 2pm at the Holbrook Community Technology Centre
  • Price: $4 million plus
  • Agent: Paull and Scollard Real Estate, Albury
  • Contact: (02) 6058 1234

Bill and Jane Plunkett have farmed Jillamatong with Bill's brother, Richard, for the past few decades, producing beef, prime lambs, wool and cereal crops.

The property, 50km north of Albury, is 90 per cent arable and ranges from creek flats to undulating red loam soils.

Set in a 750mm rainfall zone, Jillamatong has frontage to the reliable Mountain Creek, 23 catchment dams, a bore and a reticulated trough system.

It is subdivided into 25 main paddocks, with up to 5km of electric fencing and 2.5km of new boundary and internal fencing.

Pastures are based on Australian phalaris, which in the past has been grown for seed, Mt Barker, woogenellup and Riverina clovers.

There is 30ha of remnant bush retained on the farm, containing the native species of red, yellow and white box, red stringybark, red gum and black wattle.

Bill rates the carrying capacity at 12-14 dry sheep equivalents/ha.

"The farm can run 500 breeding cows and calves - in the past we have also run up to 400 Merino ewes, joined to Poll Dorset rams," he said.

The stock have been finished on 74ha of lucerne, grazing oats and triticale crops.

In recent years, pastures have been fertilised with 125kg/ha of single super.

Bill has been a passionate Landcarer and is a Master Tree Grower.

He has planted 8000 tube stock along fence lines, ridges and in gullies since the early 1980s.

The plantations were grown from seed collected on Jillamatong.

"Both the Australian National University and CSIRO have conducted biodiversity surveys on this farm," Bill said.

"They have found a huge number of native birds and animals."

Bill's father, Maurice, built Jillamatong's four-stand, double-storey woolshed, using red gum and stringybark milled on the property.

The second storey enables bales to be loaded straight on to a truck.

Featuring ash flooring, the woolshed holds 650 woolly sheep under cover and has steel holding yards.

The property has two houses, with the main five-bedroom house set in a beautifully landscaped garden.

Starting with a bare paddock, a desert ash and box alder in 1980, Bill and Jane have created the extensive garden.

Filled with 70 roses and mature deciduous and native trees, the garden has fruit and citrus trees and raised vegetable beds.

The weatherboard house was originally built in 1947 and extended in 1991.

It has five bedrooms, an office, a lounge with open fireplace and a family room.

The second house, built in 1956 by Maurice Plunkett, is set in a garden of mature trees and has three bedrooms, an office, polished cypress pine flooring, air-conditioning and wood heating.

Working improvements include two machinery sheds, a workshop with mechanic's pit, a second set of sheep yards, hay shed, steel cattle yards and four grain silos.

There is also a 1000m landing strip on the property.

Bill and Jane plan to remain in the Mountain Creek district.

"We don't want to live anywhere else - we love it here, but it is time to move on and let the next generation have a go," Jane said.