This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
THE Gear family has made a handsome profit from the sale of Bollier Park for a second time, continuing a charmed run with the Noosa hinterland trophy property which had been previously bought by the Queensland government for the failed Traveston Crossing Dam project.
Located on the Mary River, the 789 hectare property has just sold to a Queensland based buyer for over $11 million in the third time it has changed hands in 11 years.
In 2009, the Queensland state government paid the family $25.3 million for the property as part of a land buying program for the $2 billion Traveston Crossing Dam project that was ultimately rejected by the federal government.
As part of the deal, the Gear family paid $20 a week in rent to the Queensland government, before buying the property back for just $8.6 million in 2016, representing a $16.7 million profit.
The state government ultimately forked out a total of $483 million for 464 properties across 13,000 hectares in the Mary Valley, and came up $250 million short selling them off once the project was doomed.
Well watered and highly developed, Bollier Park is on 12 titles and can run up to 1,000 cattle, and is also suited to horses, cropping and lifestyle, developed with Rhodes and signal grasses, plus seteria and wynn cassia, legumes and clovers.
There are areas of alluvial and heavier flood plain soils, rising to sloping improved forest country.
Improvements include a four bedroom homestead, manager’s residence, machinery sheds, steel cattle yards and stables.
Bollier Park has a 16 hectare irrigation licence and frontage to Coonoon Gibber Creek, as well as bores, dams and 33 troughs.
Elders marketed the property for the Gear family.
