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If you’ve ever ventured down the Darling River Run you might have stumbled upon Dunlop Station, once a million acre property, the current owners are now trying to restore it to its original glory from the 1800s.
A decade ago, when Kim Chandler arrived at Dunlop Station on the Darling River near Louth in New South Wales she remembers the exact moment she realised there was much more to the property than just sheep.
“We thought we were buying our dream little sheep property only to walk into the story of Sir Samuel, who until we arrived we’d never heard of,” she said. “Before we did anything we had to sort through everything that had been left for the past 150 years. There was so much left behind on the property and the stories and the history was all contained in it. ”
In its heyday in the 1880s, “Dunlop” was owned by Sir Samuel McCaughey and sprawled over one million acres. Sir Samuel was born in Northern Ireland in 1835 and was the son of a farmer. He had his arm twisted by his uncle, Charles Wilson, to join him and seek his fortune in Australia and in April 1856 he landed in Melbourne. He acquired Dunlop from Samuel Wilson and in 1888 shearing on the property was done completely with machines for the first time in Australia.
Since then the property has been split into smaller private properties and “Dunlop” is now the smallest station in the area.
“After McCaughey sold in 1912 the next 10 owners didn’t have the wealth that he had to keep it going, so bits and pieces were sold off and it was divided to keep the main section going, so now the property is just 2200 acres,” Kim Chandler said.
In the first three years of owning Dunlop Station, Kim and her family spent countless hours combing through the mountains of papers, photos, clothes, trinkets and rubbish in the homestead.
“When we looked to buy the place we were only shown a couple of rooms in the homestead, so on the first day we found out that all the other rooms were packed to the roof with stuff. It had been many, many years of hoarding. But we found a lot of history about Sir Samuel, the original deeds going back to 1860 and lots of treasures and information.”
In 1993 the last sheep was shorn on the rickety boards inside the historic 45 stand Dunlop shearing shed that Sir Samuel built, but the Chandler family hopes to change that and one day soon bring shearing back. Since their purchase in 2011 the Chandler family have been working tirelessly to preserve and restore the Darling River station to its original state and for the past four years have also welcomed thousands of tourists as part of a farm stay venture.
”It’s still a working property with sheep and goats, feral goats are a big income out here, just as big as the sheep but since the drought we have started the farm stay side of things. The woolshed was in a bad state when we arrived but it had good bones, last year we completed stage one of the renovation, thanks to a lot of lovely volunteers from an organisation called People Helping People Australia, mostly a lot of reflooring and then they will be back again in July, which is stage two, some more flooring and some additions around the shed for us,” Kim Chandler said.
The Chandler family offers guided tours of the station with a quintessential bush morning tea and peaceful riverside campsites for those wanting to stay. Kim Chandler said the idea was born in the last drought but really took off during the pandemic when people weren’t able to travel interstate and overseas.
“We did very well during Covid19 with about 3000 visitors because we had so many people from New South Wales who wanted to get out and travel and explore their own state.”
On average Dunlop station welcomes around 2000 guests a year.
