The history of Mylora estate
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00:00Well, it was settled by the Garry family in the early 1800s.
00:14The house was built here, local bluestone that's been collected on the property.
00:17The walls are two foot thick.
00:19It's a great house in summer.
00:39It's the junction of the Dugion Creek and the Ellalong Creek right behind the house
00:42here.
00:43So it was built here back then for a reason.
00:46They ran a stagecoach business in conjunction with Cobb & Co and the Sheehan's, which was
00:50another local family from Dugion.
00:52They used to spell the horses here and swap horses here in the old stables down below
00:55the house.
00:56They used to transport mail, gold.
00:59And then there's a lot of history here with John Gilbert, Ben Hall, some of the famous
01:02bushrangers that used to try and rob the coaches.
01:05There's been stories of gunfights between the house and the stables.
01:09And that introduced the jail that's located below the house.
01:13We've converted the jail into a small apartment and we've managed to keep the old jail bars
01:22in the room just to keep that old feel that was there.
01:29Ellalong is a property next door, which Banjo Patterson's father was the manager there.
01:34He grew up there as a boy and used to go to school in Binalong and ride his horse to school.
01:38His first published poem was called The Mylora Elopement, which was referenced to Mylora
01:43and the stories of the manager's daughter.
01:46Who decided to run off with one of the station hands and it was quite scandalous at the time.
01:52So that was his first published poem that set off a brilliant career.
02:01We had partners here for a long time and they bought it back in 98 off the Garry family
02:05who were the original family that settled here.
02:14It's a very good location as far as transport.
02:17We're an hour from Canberra and three hours from Sydney, we're seven kilometres from the
02:21Hume Highway so it's very easy to get places.
02:25We sit on a lot of titles on the property so we've got great subdivision capacity.
02:30We've got double road frontage through the eastern part of the property and road access
02:35to the rear as well on the western side so the value of small blocks and subdivision
02:40is really occurring a lot.
02:43In terms of local services, Binalong is only seven minutes away, then larger grocery stores
02:49and services like doctors, dentists etc. and schools are all in Yass which is only twenty
02:56minutes away.
02:57We sell a lot of livestock through Yass, Wagga, we're only half an hour from most of our requirements
03:02whether it's mechanics, merchandise, grain, fertiliser.
03:09We're a mixed grazing enterprise, we grow crops here for grain but predominantly for
03:14livestock fattening and growing during the winter.
03:17We're very safe as far as water goes, we've got six creeks, every paddock's got a dam
03:22or at least one.
03:23We've got bores that sort of back up our dam system so we don't actually have tanks or
03:28troughs that we have to check every day in summer, both for sheep and cattle.
03:32We've got both facilities here where we can mix rations, we've got feedlot facilities
03:36to roll and crack grains that we produce on the farm.
03:40We generally plant six hundred hectares of crop, whether it's canola wheat, we run cross
03:45bred lambs here, Metamarino ewes, we've got some very good soil here.
03:49The crops to us let us run more stock through the winter.
03:52We know we've got the feed and we get it in early, start planting in February, make the
03:56most of that autumn and then May and through the winter we're fattening stock, we're not
04:01just maintaining stock, so we are able to lock in contracts with Coles or with the supermarkets
04:08for lamb or feed the cattle into the feedlot.