Wellington Vale Station (1839 - )

Situated about 40 kilometres north-west of Glen Innes on the central New England tablelands, Wellington Vale Station was first taken up as a pastoral run some time in 1839 when Arthur Wellesley Robertson, of Edinburgh, Scotland, occupied the land in partnership with one John Kelso. Robertson, who had only arrived in Australia the previous year, subsequently persuaded his brother to join him, and in 1842 Robert Reid Cuninghame Robertson arrived at Wellington Vale and purchased Kelso’s share. The property, which AW Robertson named after his godfather, the Duke of Wellington, was for a time one of the largest in northern New South Wales. In 1848, it was approximately 175,000 acres bounded on the north by Stannum, on the south by Ranger’s Valley, on the east by Deepwater Station and on the west by Strathbogie Station (although only 60,000 acres was registered due to a large section of ‘useless country’ in the north). There were then about 15,000 sheep and 250 head of cattle on the property. In 1854, AW Robertson retutned to England and Wellington Vale fell under the exclusive control of RRC Robertson. After the Robertson Land Act of 1861, Wellington Vale began to shrink in size; by the 1880s, when RRC Robertson died, the property covered an area of about 10,000 acres. In 1885, RGA Robertson-Cuninghame, in association with his brothers and sisters, took over the management of Wellington Vale. Having moved back there and built a new homestead in 1909, RGA bought out the remaining partners and lived on Wellington Vale until his death in 1928. The property eventually passed to his son, AF Robertson-Cuninghame, who formed Wellington Vale into a company with his wife and four children. Consisting of the homestead and about 2,650 acres, Wellington Vale remains in the hands of the Robertson-Cuninghame family.

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References:
A Forbes Robertson-Cuninghame, ‘The History of the Robertson-Cuninghame Family and Wellington Vale, with Family Trees’, Unpublished Manuscript, 1976, Historical Resources Centre, University of New England Regional Archives; Robertson-Cuninghame, ‘Wellington Vale in Years Gone By’, Land of the Beardies History House Bulletin, vol.18, no.1 (June 1990) and vol.18, no.2 (December 1992).

Related People

• Robertson-Cuninghame, Robert, Clarence (1924 - )