WHEN choosing a place to establish his farm in southwest Victoria in the 1860s, Christopher Bowker opted for a remote area near Princetown.
His eldest son, John, established a farm on a nearby remote hill and named it Kangaroobie.
Little did John know the quiet, remote farmland would eventually become a grazing property with tourist accommodation booked solid year-round.
"The next stop is Antarctica," descendant Jenny Bowker says of the farm's location.
The 809ha farm has mostly remained in Bowker hands and Jenny says it has been home to a number of farming enterprises over the years, including turkeys, pigs, beef, sheep and dairy.
It is now run by Jenny's son Matt and his wife, Sophie, as a beef, sheep and tourism operation.
The tourist accommodation was built by Jenny and her late husband, Bill, in 1978 and the income it generates has outstripped farm returns since the 1980s.
Jenny said bushland was cleared with bullocks in the 1860s to run turkeys and pigs.
In the early 1900s, it was a dairy and later ran beef and sheep.
Jenny said Christopher Bowker probably chose Princetown because it was a long way from Melbourne.
Christopher, who came to Australia from Scotland in the 1840s, ran a foundry on the corner of Elizabeth and Collins streets in Melbourne before moving to Ceres, near Geelong, where he raised eight children.
He later moved to Princetown.
Jenny guessed the name, Kangaroobie, meant resting place of kangaroos and was a nod to the Bowker's Scottish heritage.
"Bie is resting place in Scottish," she said.
Jenny said being so close to the Shipwreck Coast, the family was involved in assisting travellers who survived the wrecks, including the famous Loch Ard.
In the early 1900s, the property was a mixed farm and was sold by John Bowker about the time of the Great Depression. His son took off-farm work, including wool classing, to re-purchase the property.
In 1978, after much soul-searching, Bill and Jenny decided to take over the property from Bill's parents.
"It was a bad time for agriculture," Jenny said.
"It was a time when you would send a truckload of beautiful sheep to market and get 50 cents each for them.
"People were digging holes and shooting their sheep."
The poor prices worked to Jenny's advantage when she started building her beef herd, which now stands at 550-600 head.
"In 1978 I bought some Angus cows for $50 per head," Jenny said.
"I felt sorry for the farmer."
She said Bill bred Drysdale sheep, which were shorn two or three times a year, but they only run a handful now.
In the 1980s, Jenny researched crossing her Angus herd with Simmentals to increase the milk production in the heifers.
"I went to a sale at (former prime minister) Malcolm Fraser's property, Nareen, where he had a cross of Herefords and Simmentals called Beefmaster," Jenny said.
Nowdays, Banquet Angus bulls are joined to the young heifers and a Simmental bull put over cows aged two years and older, to turn off about 250 vealers each year.
Jenny said the property was usually self-sustaining in growing enough pasture and hay for the cattle, but fodder had to be brought in during the recent dry years.
Cattle are contained in their paddocks by solar-powered electric fences.
They are also kept out of the more than 121ha of bushland by electric and non-electric fences.
In the late 1970s, after two years of research which included talking to schools, Jenny decided to diversify the farm's income by building accommodation for tourists and school groups in the late 1970s.
The move was successful and the farm now hosts hundreds of students, tourists, church groups and weddings each year.
Kangaroobie can accommodate up to 200 people and is booked out year-round.
In a nod to the Shipwreck Coast, each room is named after one of the nearby wrecks.
Jenny said the students were given a few clues and had to research the shipwrecks to figure out which room they were staying in.
The accommodation was expanded with a couple of rooms from the 2000 Sydney Olympic Village, which were used to house media during the Games.
The property, partly bounded by the Gellibrand River, has views of the Shipwreck Coast and the Twelve Apostles in the distance.
"I always said this was such a special part of the world for children to see," Jenny said.
She said visitors got involved in aspects of the farm, such as calving and lambing.
"There will be a whole lot of students standing there anxiously waiting for a cow to start calving," Jenny said.
"I've had some of them refuse to eat the roast at night after that."
Kangaroobie proved to be a safe location during the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfire.
"I had 100 girls here from a school in Essendon and the police called telling me to evacuate them, but I refused because the fire couldn't jump the river," Jenny said.
"To give him his due, the sergeant called the next day to say I'd made the right decision."
