Like other corporate owners before it, Paraway Pastoral Company uses Oxley Station – which it bought from Clyde Agriculture in 2011 – essentially as a cattle breeding base.
But unlike all previous owners since J.J. Leahy, who have preferred to crossbreed, Paraway is running a purebred herd of Angus, bred on Te Mania and Pathfinder bloodlines.
Normal stocking level is about 4000 breeders (currently reduced to about 3500 due to the season), with calves being weaned at five months and the steers trucked to “Newstead” at Inverell to grow out.
The whole operation is handled throughout most of the year by just two men – the manager, Greg Murie, and assistant manager Angus Campbell – with contractors engaged for the two big annual jobs of marking and drafting.
It’s a far cry from the dozen or so employees who lived and worked on “Oxley” full time, when Greg first worked there with Twynam in the 1990s.
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A former competitive equestrian with three-day-event trophies to his credit in Australia and New Zealand, Greg had previously been doing contract stock work on Twynam’s nearby “Buttabone”, when he was offered a permanent position on “Oxley” by Phil Uren.
He ended up managing the property for two years, leaving when it was sold to Clyde in 1998 to manage Twynam’s “Boolcarrol” at Wee Waa, until it was sold to Ron Greentree in 2008.
Then followed two stints managing other companies’ stations in Queensland (“Portland Downs” and “Homebush”) before he returned to “Oxley” as manager for Paraway in April 2011. Greg and his wife Toni live in the main homestead that was formerly the “Ringorah” homestead before being incorporated into “Oxley” in the 1970s.
Located well away from the river, it doesn’t have the problems of the original Leahy homestead, where the doors were fitted above the internal floor level with a barrier beneath, to keep floodwaters out. Extensive renovations were undertaken to the main homestead by Clyde, and again by Paraway, making it today a pleasing blend of traditional features such as wide gauzed verandahs, and modern touches. The homestead is set amid spacious lawns and gardens, providing a welcome green refuge from the dusty day-to-day realities of nursing hungry cattle through an unrelenting El Nino drought.
Despite the drought, and notwithstanding the property’s relative remoteness, Greg harbours a genuine attachment to “Oxley”, which he puts down to its colourful history and its unique geography.
On the history side, he believes he may have found a marked tree (with inscription no longer legible) dating back to the 1818 waterlogged expedition of the explorer John Oxley.
And then there’s the geography: the Macquarie Marshes reedbeds which account for nearly one-third of the property’s total area, constituting a natural irrigation system that enables “Oxley” to maintain production in all but the most severe droughts.
Like other grazing properties abutting on the marshes, “Oxley” derives benefit from the 130,000 megalitres of environmental flows that are released each year to sustain the wetlands.
This is underpinned by a water-sharing agreement that was signed off between all parties three years ago (but still causes spats among competing water users).
At the time of The Land’s visit last month, environmental water was flowing onto (and out of ) “Oxley” via the main river and three off-take streams regulated by the Marebone Weir, although the releases were due to cease in early December.
Despite its natural advantage of access to the regularly-watered reedbed country, “Oxley” is supplementary feeding about 30 per cent of its current herd, with hay from distant sources and cottonseed.
But like everyone else, Greg wants nothing more than for the drought to end, for the hand-feeding to finish, and for “Oxley” to return to full production as Paraway’s premier NSW cattle “nursery”.