History
After sea levels dropped, the Murray River was 20 to 30 times larger than it is now, and formed the vast floodplain that now constitutes the Murray Scroll Belt.
The current river channel is up to 15 kilometres north of the southern edge of the ancient floodplain; the floodplain edge is very noticeable when approaching Neds Corner homestead from the highway as you literally drop down onto the Murray Scroll Belt.
Even more dramatic is the view from the air where you can see the scroll-like patterns tracing the ancient meanderings of the Murray, its anabranches and billabongs. Neds Corner is the only occurrence of this landform in Victoria.
First People on Country
The property is on Ngintait Country and the first people of Millewa Mallee.
The property features numerous important cultural heritage sites including ancestral burials, scar trees that provided bark for canoes, shields and other items, oven mounds, fireplaces, stone tool artefacts and shell middens.
Neds Corner is culturally important to Traditional Owners today and they participate and contribute knowledge to its ongoing management.
The first 100 years of European settlement: 1840s to 1940s
Neds Corner was first settled by Europeans for agriculture in 1849. A leasehold was taken up by Edward Bagot who ran cattle, brumbies and sheep for 25 years.
The property was named after a shepherd called Ned who worked for Bagot. It’s believed Ned used a loop in the river to keep sheep safe, which then became known as ‘Neds Corner’.
In the 1870s, Bagot sold the property and by 1911 the station was possibly six times its current size. After World War l, some of the leaseholds were broken up for
soldier settlements and a group of 18 men was granted freehold to parts of the Neds Corner lease in 1938, forming the Neds Corner Pastoral Company Pty Ltd.
From the Kidman era to the conservation era
Drought ravaged south-eastern Australia in the 1940s and by 1948, the property was sold to the Kidman Pastoral Company, becoming part of its agricultural empire which encompassed three per cent of Australia.
During the Kidman era some leases to the west of the current station that extended to the South Australian border were not renewed by the government and were instead added to the Murray Sunset National Park in 1991. Kidman Pastoral Group sold Neds Corner shortly afterwards. Trust for Nature bought it in 2002.