Our History
After returning home from living in Kenya & Tanzania, East Africa for 7 years. Peter and Sue Atkinson dreamed of living in the country and running a small farm. In 1985 this dream was realised when they brought their first block of land consisting of 32 hectares in Harrogate, in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia. They went ahead and purchased 200 Merino Wethers from the Mount Pleasant Saleyards to run on the farm.
The farm was expanded in 1987 with another 32 hectare block that Sue’s parents Clarry and Judith built their house on.
In 1989 Peter and Sue’s son Chris was born and in the following years another 44 hectares would be added to the farms.
2002 bought with it a substantial increase to the operation with a purchase of a 315 hectare property on the Bremer Range, including the Mt Beevor Summit. This boosted the small farm into a good size Cattle/Sheep operation.
After Chris had finished with school he went and did his wool classing certificate, and in the next couple of years decided growing wool was the career path he wanted to pursue. Soon after, the next major step in the growth of the farming business was made.
In 2008, an 808 hectare property on Kangaroo Island was purchased in order to make the business large enough to support itself. This property was called “Wallaby Run” because of the high number of native wallaby’s that inhabited it.
Since 2008 more land has been added and the whole operation consists of 1865 hectares between the Adelaide Hills and Kangaroo Island. Over 200 hectares of this is left un-grazed as native bushland for the native flora and fauna. Chris and his wife Tarlee have taken over most of the operational management of the 2 farms. They also now have 2 children of their own, Alexis and Kaiden who may one day continue to develop and expand the family farming business.
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be where you’ve always been.”
We are always striving to learn more, and find better ways to do things. This has been paramount being a growing farm and not an established generational farm. Everything since the first block was purchased in 1985 has had to be learned from scratch. Even though we are now at a point where the farms are running very well and we are more than comfortable with farming, we will not stop trying to find new ways to improve our methods.