As the sixth largest country in the world, Australia spans a staggering 7.7 million square kilometres – that's 770 million hectares – with land ownership in the giant nation split between indigenous communities, the state, and private individuals and companies. As much as 62.7% of Australia is privately owned, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Click or scroll through as we look at 50 of the top landowners, from families that have farmed their land for generations to major multinational companies wanting to get in on the world of Aussie agriculture.

The Beidahuang Group, China's largest agricultural and agribusiness company, owns 85,000 hectares of farmland in Australia. There's been a growing trend of Chinese agribusiness firms snapping up hundreds of thousands of hectares of Aussie farmland in recent years. That said, the majority of this is now rumoured to have been leased out rather than used by the company itself, according to Farmland Grab.

The 90,900-hectare Prospect Station in Croydon, Queensland is the property of the McCoy family, as reported by the Weekly Times Now. The sizeable station is devoted to raising sheep and has been in the same family for a number of decades. In fact, around 88% of agriculture land in Australia is Australian-owned.

Former first-class cricketer turned politician and wool industry bigwig, Ian McLachlan is the owner of Tupra Station in New South Wales, as well as the nearby Oxley Station, which he added to his ever-growing portfolio in 2016 according to The Land.

The long-established Keats Family Pastoral is still run by the Keats family. The clan owns and operates four major cattle stations in Queensland, including properties near Cloncurry and Mackay, as well as Belford Station, Richmond. This equates to just under 125,000 hectares of land, according to the Weekly Times Now.

The Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company (SALIC) made its first acquisition in Australian farming in April 2019, purchasing 200,000 hectares of land including 40,000 Merino sheep, according to Arabian Business. Founded in 2012, this investment can be seen as part of SALIC's long-term goal of controlling all elements of agricultural production and supply on a global scale.

The brother of Vietnam's richest person, media boss Pham Nhat Vu branched out into the Australian beef industry in 2016 by purchasing the Northern Territory's Vermelha Station for a cool AU$18 million (£9.8m). He now controls 203,900 hectares, according to The Weekly Times.

Australia's most renowned barrister Allan Myers doesn’t just enforce the law of the land, he also owns a lot of it too. Cattle farming is the main preoccupation at the eminent lawyer’s Dunkeld Pastoral Company, which has holdings totalling more than 623,000 hectares in Western Australia, Victoria and the Northern Territory. Myers also holds shares in the Tipperary Group of Stations, which spans 386,000 hectares, although it is unclear exactly how much of the land the barrister has a claim to. It was also rumoured in June 2020 that Myers bought 1,273 hectares of Devon Park, in Dunkeld, western Australia for AU$14.2 million (£8m) at auction, but it's not been publicly confirmed if Myers was the mystery buyer.

In 2015, Ma Xingfa, the chairman of Chinese automaker Geely, bagged two huge cattle stations in Queensland and the Northern Territory, which together total around 705,198 hectares. Ma later sold those stations last year, and is currently looking to do the same with his Balfour Downs and Wandaya stations, which amount to 634,004 hectares. The exact amount of land owned by the billionaire is unknown, but just factoring in these stations makes his stake in Australian land pretty hefty until he finds a buyer.

Scott Harris has hit the Australian headlines time and again for his controversial plans to clear thousands of hectares of bushland to expand his agricultural portfolio. Harris had permission to clear 58,000 of his enormous 931,000-hectare Strathmore Station in 2015, but came under fire for threatening animal habitats and damaging wetland in what was one of the country’s biggest single land clearings. Harris also owns Kingvale Station, and plans to clear more than 1,800 hectares of its land were strongly objected to given the plot’s proximity to the Great Barrier Reef.

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Investors in Australian sustainable timber company New Forests, which include Japan's Mitsui & Co., ultimately own the firm's more than 950,000 hectares of forest in Australia, New Zealand, parts of Asia, and the USA.

Filipino banker and property mogul Romeo Roxas has built a formidable real estate portfolio in Australia in recent years, including the addition of the 560,000-hectare Murray Downs Station and the 265,000-hectare Epenarra Station in 2015. Roxas already had significant agricultural interests in Australia, including more than 60,000 hectares in New South Wales, as well as the 80,000 hectares across the districts of Aurora and Quezon in the Philippines, bringing the property mogul’s portfolio to more than 965,000 hectares.

The son of the late Australian wool baron Sir William Gunn, Bill Gunn is the founder and majority shareholder in the Gunn Agri Partners trust, which runs several large-scale cattle stations across Australia totalling almost a million hectares.

This moneyed Australian family owns and operates over a million hectares of land Down Under, according to The Weekly Times. However, head of the family Tom Brinkworth died last August at the age of 83. His wife Patricia and the remaining family now control 100 holdings in total, from small farms to epic stretches of pasture that stretch as far as the eye can see. 

Backed by one of South Africa’s richest people, Giovanni Ravazzotti, and his daughter Luciana Ravazzotti Langenhoven and son-in-law Pierre Langenhoven, Rallen Australia is becoming a prominent player in the world of Australian landownership. In February 2020, the company acquired two major cattle stations, Tanumbirini and Forrest Hill, at a cost of AU$70 million (£39m). The stations stretch across 559,370 hectares and make up the bulk of the company’s extensive portfolio, which also includes Kalala Station, purchased for AU$58 million (£32m), and Mt McMinn and Big River stations, acquired for AU$7.5 million (£4.2m) and AU$5.5 million (£3m) respectively. Rallen currently owns 1.09 million hectares of land, with an eye to acquire more in the next decade, as reported by Financial Review.

One of Australia’s richest people with a fortune of AU$25.9 billion (£14.4bn), mining legend Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest has significant livestock farming interests. After purchasing another two stations at a cost of AUS$30 million (£17m) last year, the holdings, which include Western Australia's Minderoo and Brickhouse Cattle Stations, total 1.12 million hectares, an area more or less the size of Qatar. In 2020 Forrest found himself in the spotlight after his attempt to appeal a federal court decision in the High Court that indigenous Yindjibarndi people owned the rights to the Pilbara mine in Western Australia was rejected and the case was not heard.

The Hewitt family have been pastoralists in Queensland for generations and the clan still controls numerous land holdings across the Australian state, as well as in the Northern Territory and New South Wales. The family’s extensive portfolio of 16 stations and aggregations includes the 185,700-hectare Kalabity and the 127,337-hectare Tandou Station in Alice Springs, and after the 2017 purchase of the Hale pastoral stations, Ambalindum and Numery, the family portfolio expanded to 1.2 million hectares.

The sprawling cattle business founded by the late Australian cattle baron Graeme Acton (pictured) is now owned by his family. The Acton Land and Cattle Company owned 1.58 million hectares when the Queenslander passed away in 2014, and the family has since formed Australian Cattle and Beef Holdings in a joint venture with the Lee family, who feature later in this round-up. Acton was well-known for his involvement in the Australian sport of campdrafting, where a horse and rider works cattle. But sadly it was this sport that led to his death after he fell from a horse during a competition and sustained severe injuries.

Stanbroke Pastoral runs eight enormous cattle stations in Queensland, making the firm one of the largest in the Australian farming sector. The company is controlled by the children of the late founder, grain king Peter Menegazzo, who was killed in a plane crash alongside his wife Angela in 2005. Menegazzo's sudden death has caused divides in the family, with his children still embroiled in court room dramas over their inheritance over a decade later.

In April 2020 the McMillan Pastoral Company agreed to buy Wollogorang Station and Wentworth Station from Chinese billionaire Ma Xingfa, who had acquired the holdings in 2015. The deal cost AUS$53 million (£30m) and boosted the McMillan family’s portfolio by almost 706,000 hectares. In their second acquisition of the year, the McMillans then purchased Roxborough Downs and Mudgerebar Station, adding another 420,000 hectares. The family already owned Calvert Hills Station in the Cloncurry region of North West Queensland, which they acquired for AUS$15 million (£8.5m) in 2013, bringing their total land to around 1.63 million hectares.

The Morgan and Wells families together own 2.1 million hectares of land along the border of South Australia and New South Wales. Their Mutooroo Pastoral Company was established in 1868 and manages five cattle stations including Quinyambie, which alone comprises 1.2 million hectares.

Australian retail entrepreneur Brett Blundy has amassed an epic portfolio of land over the past few years, including the supersized Walhallow Cattle Station in the Northern Territory, which he acquired in 2015 for AU$100 million (£56m) according to Farmland Grab. His BBRC Beef company owns about 2.4 million hectares in total.

Australia's largest privately-owned beef producer, the Consolidated Pastoral Company has around 300,000 head of cattle at any one time and a massive 3.6 million hectares throughout the country. The company is majority-owned by UK investor Guy Hands' Terra Firma Capital Partners.

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Dating way back to 1824, the Australian Agricultural Company is the nation's oldest firm. Today, it's a world-leading beef producer with British tycoon Joe Lewis as the major shareholder. The company owns and operates an incredible 6.4 million hectares in Queensland and the Northern Territory.

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Australia's wealthiest person is now the country's number one private individual landowner. Mining magnate Gina Rinehart teamed up with China's Shanghai CRED in 2016 to buy the lion's share of S. Kidman & Co. which is the largest individual private land holding on the planet. This has not only added to her already bulging real estate portfolio, but also means that the amount of Australian land she owns is equivalent to the whole of South Korea in terms of area. Rinehart’s holdings are set to decrease in the coming year, however, as she recently announced plans to sell cattle stations in Western Australia and the Northern Territory that amount to 1.876 million hectares. The billionaire wants to focus on innovating operations at her other stations, which will total 7.8 million hectares once the sales are complete, but will still see her in pole position as Australia’s biggest landowner. 

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