This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
FAMOUS horse training facility Macedon Lodge – home to over 30 group one winners, including seven Melbourne Cup winners – is back on the market, tipped to bring in more than $30 million for former Spotless Group CEO and pub owner Bruce Dixon.
It’s little more than two years since Dixon paid $20 million to horse owner and developer Lloyd Williams for the property.
Since then he has expanded the property’s offering and used it for as many as four trainers, and there is approval to construct a further 120 stable boxes in addition to the existing 75 boxes.
The property spans 121 hectares in Victoria’s Mount Macedon and includes state-of-the-art thoroughbred training and recovery facilities, including a 1,500-metre uphill Martin Collins Polytrack, 970-metre round Fibresand track, two 12 horse walkers, six-horse water walker, 80-metre swimming pool, equine spas, solariums and treadmills
Legendary horses that have come through the facility include Ethereal, which won the Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double in 2001, while other Melbourne Cup winners include Efficient, Green Moon and Almandin.
Fawkner and Zipping are also group one winners.
Elders Real Estate is managing the expressions of interest campaign, which runs to Thursday, 5th December.
Dixon earlier this year completed the $1.4 billion sale of the majority of his Australian Venue Co., which owns around 250 pubs across the country, to PAG. He is retaining a large shareholding in the company.
Around that time he paid about $14 million for the Victorian retreat of ex-model and Elucell director Rachel Perrin, in Mitchellstown.
His first foray into horses was his $7.5 million acquisition in 2020 of Olympian Mary Hanna’s equestrian facility, also in regional Victoria, on the Bellarine Peninsula.