Family connection to Warrnambool dairy farm to end after 103 years

An award-winning dairy operation in Victoria’s Warrnambool region that has been in the same family for more than a century has been listed for sale.

Spanning 261ha, Kangertong is located at 1626 Hopkins Highway in Purnim, and has been run as a dairy farm by four generations of the Woolley family since 1919. 

Lisa Dwyer, who owns and operates the property with her husband Eddie, is the great granddaughter of James Woolley, who established the farm.

The vendor is a leading participant in the Dairy Farm Monitor Project, run by Dairy Australia and Agriculture Victoria, with the highly-productive operation producing in excess of 3,700,000L of milk and 270,000kg of milk solids annually. 

Kangertong’s dairy herd has also received the Gold Award at the Australian Milk Quality Awards three times since 2016.

The dairy complex consists of a 40-bail rotary and 420-cow yard with a newly-installed flood wash system, accompanied by Allflex digital cow monitoring linked to milk production software and an auto-draft gate. 

Other improvements include shedding, a transition feed pad, a primary four-bedroom residence and a three-bedroom manager’s residence that was renovated this year.

The property is on the fringe of the Purnim township, 16km north-east of Warrnambool, and offers easy access to dairy industry processing centres in Cobden, Koroit and Allansford.

CBRE’s Matt Childs and David Goodfellow have been appointed to manage the sale campaign on behalf of Lisa and Eddie Dwyer, with Expressions of Interest invited by November 3.

“In Kangertong, the Woolley and now Dwyer families have developed an industry-leading dairy operation with elite production over the course of more than a century,” Mr Childs said. 

“South West Victoria is recognised as one of Australia’s most productive agricultural regions due to its climate and soil types, and rarely are properties of this calibre offered for sale in the region.”

Of the 261ha site, 98% is classed as high-quality arable area including 34.4ha of irrigation, with the majority of the property underpinned by rich dark brown and grey loam and clay soils.

The average productivity of its pastures exceeds 10 tonnes of dry matter per milking hectare grown on the dryland area.

The nearby Warrnambool Airport receives average annual rainfall of 786mm, with that reliability supported at Kangertong by two recently-installed T-L centre pivot irrigators and 178ML of water entitlements.

Kangertong is being offered for sale on a walk-in-walk-out basis, inclusive of current inventory of plant and equipment and the entire cattle herd.