WHOEVER ends up buying Angledool Station, the historic Lightning Ridge property that went on the market in September, will probably have broadacre farming in mind.
Some 3000 hectares of the 21,390ha Narran River station is suitable for cultivation including 1000ha of lakebed with a history of winter and summer opportunity cropping.
But while cropping – along with cattle agistment – is the focus of present management by the Treweeke family, it was far from the minds of the station’s former owners.
For 74 years before Rory and Joan Treweeke bought the property in 1969, “Angledool” was a sheep station of the former Australian Mercantile Land and Finance Company (AML and F).
It was just one of the many company sheep stations which once dominated the rich Mitchell grass plains country between the Barwon River and the Queensland border.
AML and F alone held “Dunumbral”, “Llanillo” and “Collymongle” as well as “Angledool”.
Adjoining “Angledool” was “Yeranbah”, owned by Australian Pastoral Company, while the New Zealand and Australian Land Company held “Goondoobluie”, “Bangate" and “Weilmoringle”.
This was an era when Australia truly rode on the sheep’s back, and AML and F, with a string of pastoral properties across the eastern States, was one of the industry’s biggest players.
The company had become a station owner initially by default, taking over the runs of deceased clients during periods when nobody else could be found to buy them.
Angledool Station was a case in point.
Taken up in the 1840s by the Eather family, it was later bought by Henry Newcomen, from whose trustees AML and F took it over in 1895.
The property had previously been put to auction without result in 1888, when it was advertised as a “valuable squatting property” of 184,517 acres, offered with 88,890 sheep.
Within 10 years of AML and F’s takeover of “Angledool”, other foreclosures and strategic purchases had built its holdings to more than 20 – in NSW alone, it ran more than 600,000 sheep.
Station ownership remained an important activity for AML and F, complementing its agency and finance operations, until the 1970s when (like other pastoral companies) it vacated the scene.
In the end, the stations became a burden, but back in the early part of last century, they were highly profitable – much more so, in fact, than woolbroking, finance and agency operations.
The then general manager of AML and F, James Kidd, did an exercise in 1928 which showed company funds invested in stations over a period of 20-odd years had returned 15.4 per cent, or just over double the yield from its agency activities.
And “Angledool” was one of the ?ve stations singled out for special mention as above-average performers.
When acquired by the Treweekes in 1969, “Angledool” was a mere 12,000ha – the homestead block of the original station.
To this they added in 1993 the adjoining “Narrandool” (another block of the original station) to bring it to its present size.
But before resumptions for soldier settlement after both world wars started to reduce its area, the station sprawled over 72,000ha (180,000ac), and ran up to 90,000 sheep.
These were shorn in a woolshed of 48 stands of which about 30 were normally used, and the wool loaded onto bullock wagons for haulage 100 kilometres to Pokataroo, the nearest rail siding.
That woolshed is now long gone – a new eight-stand steel-framed woolshed was erected in 1957 (re-using some of the iron from the earlier shed), powered by a steam engine until a Lister diesel replaced it in the mid-1970s.
The last shearing took place in 1998, since which time “Angledool” has carried only cattle – a change that has benefited the pastoral environment, according to Rory.
Today “Angledool” is operated by just Rory and Joan and their son Michael and his wife Kate, with contractors engaged for harvesting. (They also sharefarm on other nearby properties.)
It’s a far cry from the company era, when 38 full-time staff were employed on the station right up to the beginning of the Second World War, and many more in the early part of the century.
Much is known about that earlier era, thanks to an unpublished memoir left by the late Marjorie Lydiard, who grew up on “Angledool” where her father, Jock Robertson, was manager from 1915 until the mid-1930s.
When they took up residence at “Angledool”, the Robertsons moved into a roomy homestead built a few years earlier to replace the original pine log structure erected by Newcomen.
Built of solid timber blocks 20cm thick, it had a central hallway, a large drawing-room and three bedrooms, with breezeways, verandahs all around and gauzed sleepouts.
Adjacent to the main house were the kitchen and detached bathroom, domestics’ quarters, meat-house and dairy.
All that remains of that original complex today is the meat-house, which is heritage-listed. The homestead was demolished in 1957 and the present weatherboard residence built on its site.
Gone also is the gravel courtyard that used to lead to the house, flanked by the usual scattering of station outbuildings – offices, store and jackeroos’ barracks.
The vegetable garden where Chinese gardeners once toiled has gone back to nature, but the homestead garden still has the same palms, pepper trees, bamboo and oleanders of Marjorie’s day.
Apart from the staff needed to run the station – the overseer, station-hands, jackeroos, boundary riders, teamsters, fencers, rabbiters and so on – the homestead was a hive of industry itself.
Domestic staff included a “married couple” (cook and groom), baker, laundress, carpenter, gardeners, governess and parlour-maid who also waited at table.
Evening meals were a formal occasion, with little regard for climatic realities. The men, including the jackeroos, wore suits in winter and summer, and the women long frocks.
When the 6.30pm dinner gong sounded, the junior jackeroo opened the dining-room door and the manager and his wife led the way in, followed by family and staff in order of seniority.
Once everyone was seated at the table with its white damask cloth and napkins, the manager at one end would dispense the soup from a large tureen. This was followed by a roast with home-grown vegetables, and then dessert.
No-one could lift an eating iron before the manager, and the jackeroos participated little in table conversation, their main concern being to eat quickly enough to score a second helping.
Although remote from major centres, “Angledool” was well served by the transport of the day – twice a week a mail coach arrived from Collarenebri and there was a sulky service from Walgett.
Major supplies were brought by wagon every three months from the railhead at Pokataroo, their arrival always attended by much anticipation and excitement.
Immediate needs were catered for by the nearby Angledool township, where there was a post office, store, hotel, police station, school, hospital and two churches.
Like many prominent stations, “Angledool” saw its share of distinguished visitors, not least the NSW Governor Sir Phillip Game, and Lady Game, who spent a few days there in 1934.
The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) was also meant to stay there with his retinue during his 1920 royal tour, but floods intervened and the visit was cancelled.
It was therefore fitting the Treweekes caught up with another Prince of Wales earlier this month, although – like the mountain to Mahomet – they had to travel to Longreach to do it.
If Jock Robertson, or even the last company manager, Ken Whitty, were to revisit “Angledool” today, they would find a much changed scene.
In the homestead paddock instead of the horses, Land Rovers and ag bikes of earlier times, they would see huge grain trucks, tractors, sprayers and augers that had no place on the Angledool Station of AML and F.
But at least if invited to stay for dinner with the Treweekes, they wouldn’t have to don a suit and tie, company style, in 30 degree heat!
