Towns in Australia

Exploring Australia, town by town

Ellerston NSW

Ellerston

Postcode: 2337

Ellerston is a small town in New South Wales, Australia, in Upper Hunter Shire. It is located 70km’s west of Scone in the Hunter Valley. Ellerston Pastoral is owned by the late media mogul, Kerry Packer and is now run by the other members of the Packer family.

Ellerston offers some of Australia’s best horse sporting fields (for polo and racing). Its golf course is rated #4 in Australia. Only three people a week on average play golf there, due to the clubs exclusivity.

Beginning at the headwaters of the Hunter and Manning Rivers at the foot of the Barrington Tops Wilderness Area, the Ellerston aggregation carries up to 11,000 Hereford cattle, selling steers and heifers twice yearly in nearby Scone.

Sir Frank Packer and Mr J. D. MacLeod purchased Ellerston in 1972 as an addition to their Hunters Vale and Tomalla properties originally purchased in 1956.

Subdivisions and land resumptions in the years to follow saw Ellerston reduced to 8,910 ha. The Ellerston Pastoral Company reversed this decline in size by the acquisition of Sunny Brae, Brumlo, Zanzibar and Hunters Valley from 1974 to 1985, which swelled the aggregation to its current 27,135 ha.