GENERAL DESCRIPTION

The freehold of Nap Nap Station is approximately 30,000 hectares, 1000 of which is Annual Lease country and TSR (traveling stock reserve). The property lies on both sides of the Murrumbidgee River, and enjoys a river frontage of over 70km.

The Lachlan River runs through the famous Lachlan reed beds (also known as the Great Cumbung Swamp) into the Murrumbidgee opposite the Western boundary of Nap Nap.

The country on the Southern side of the river is in the Lower Murrumbidgee flood plain and consequently enjoys the benefit of periodic flooding from both the river and various creeks carrying water on high river flows.

The station is an excellent balance of typical Riverina Plains’ saltbush, herbages, native grasses, clovers, self mulching flood plain soils, river country and open red gum forest.

The majority of the run is a declared Wildlife Reserve. There are extensive areas of Box swamps and several of these contain valuable rookeries which have led those areas to be declared Protected Lands within the Flood Plain Management Scheme.

Nap Nap is healthy country for both cattle and sheep. Modern farming and earth moving techniques have enabled irrigation to be introduced and this in turn has allowed some cropping to be undertaken together with some other farming techniques to increase productivity.

There are four licensed river pumps with water licences for 5684 megalitres of water.

The station has four sets of cattle yards, two sets of paddock yards for working sheep in addition to the yards at the two shearing sheds – one North and one South of the river.

HISTORY

Nap Nap was first settled by George Hobler in 1845. Hobler called the property by the native name for the locality - Nap Nap, meaning 'much water'. Control of Nap Nap passed through several owners before being acquired by Robert Wilson Ronald in 1878, beginning an unbroken period of Ronald family ownership extending for over 100 years. When the Ronalds acquired Nap Nap it spanned some 262,000 acres and the contract of sale showed a price of £97,500, which included 40,000 sheep, 4,500 cattle, 200 horse and working plant and equipment. When Nap Nap was acquired by the Armstrong family in 1986 it was approximately 42,000 acres. The following year the Armstrongs acquired Nimmie Station, and a year later they added Gelam and Pibroch on the Northern side of the Murrumbidgee, and some years later again, Willow Grove to the North West, bringing Nap Nap to approximately 90,000 acres. In 2014, the Armstrongs sold approximately 15,000 acres of Nap Nap’s flood plain country as part of the Murray Darling Basin water buy-back scheme.

THE DISTRICT

The Western Riverina is not soft country. As one drives north from Deniliquin on the Cobb Highway the plains extend for endless miles in every direction, broken only here and there by clumps or lines of trees marking swamps and creeks which only hold water occasionally. The soils vary from hard red country to sandy loams and the deep grey loams of the flood plains of the Lower Murrumbidgee.

The vegetation is a mix of salt bush, Dillon bush and native grasses, with a broad range of herbages interspersed. Along the creeks and rivers and in the swamps the River Red Gum, Yellow and Grey Box trees predominate together with Boree trees and Cooba Willows in the more open areas.

The temperatures are extreme, with cracking frosts in winter and hot dry summers - prone to producing dust storms which sometimes require the local population to shovel sand from their houses, their fences and sheep yards. In the earlier part of the 20th Century the Hay local paper recorded a period when the temperature did not fall below 100 degrees Fahrenheit (day or night) for a stretch of five days.

The land is so flat that, when the Murrumbidgee River floods out of its banks, the water may extend for miles at a depth of just a few inches. Sand hills marking the position of ancient beaches dot the landscape, covered in many cases by stands of Murray Pine – a type of Cypress Pine much appreciated by the early settlers for its white ant resistant properties.

The buildings of the district reflect the nature of the country. They are substantial but nothing is grand in the manner of some of the homesteads of the Western Districts of Victoria.

OUR CULTURAL AND HERITAGE ASSETS

Nap Nap is on Nari Nari Country which extends from Balranald to Booligal on the south side of the Lachlan River. For thousands of years the Nari Nari lived and thrived on a large inland sea and a series of inland rivers providing bountiful food and water.

Nap Nap contains a number of aboriginal camps and burial sites situated on the banks of the historical wetlands. Amongst these sites is a significant sacred burial site situated on a sand hill in the middle of the property which is one of the largest inland burial sites in NSW, and is said to rival the Lake Mungo burial site, located 120KM north of Robinvale, in significance.

The bones found on the Nap Nap burial site have been carbon dated at more than 10,000 years old. Also to be seen are chips of flint and stone. There is no stone naturally occurring on the flood plain, so all these stone chips represent implements brought from elsewhere by the early Aboriginals.

Recent conversation works carried out by members of the Hay Local Aboriginal Land Council and National Parks and Wildlife Service officers have covered much of the northern side of the dune to protect it from erosion. Conservation works have also been completed on the south-west side after revegetation with saltbush was established on the northern side. A strong working relationship with the Armstrong and Cullenward families and The Nari Nari has developed in the process of caring for this important site.