The 100 big-ticket farm sales of 2023

But deep within 2023 was a tale of the big end of town powering on, while rising interest rates, falling commodity prices and the fear of looming El Nino leading smaller buyers to temper their enthusiasm.

However, the gold nuggets continued to shine, with many regions seeing record sale prices.

LAWD director Danny Thomas described 2023 as "remarkable, quite incredible".

Mr Thomas said the dividing line for the two-speed market was properties worth above or below about $50 million.

""The farmer-farmer market, the sub-$50 million segment, was impacted fairly significantly by the speed by which the cost of debt increased, coupled with what everyone thought was going to be an El Nino and the impact of livestock prices."

"When you get over $50 million, you are away from southern livestock and you are getting into the northern livestock game and cropping, cotton in particular, where the market is as strong as it's been."

"The livestock prices particularly, the confidence evaporated just about everywhere except in the what I would call the adulterated markets, like central Queensland, where a lot of people are still getting big cheques for gas and mining, so there were still record prices being paid through there," Mr Thomas said.

"(There were) probably some record prices through the Territory, that savannah zone extending from Cairns to Broome, where there was some carbon money coming in.

"But in the rest of the pure-play livestock market, things really ground to a halt with not lots of deals happening."

The year kicked off with a bang, withlandmark sales in Western Australia and NSW continuing the frenetic sales pace of 2022.

The 8554-hectare Cherylton Farms, near Kojonup in Western Australia, fetched $100 million, or $11,690 a hectare, in January after a months-long sales campaign, selling to a Victorian family.

The farm, in WA's wheatbelt, was a diversified cropping and livestock grazing operation.

Also in January was the $120 million sale of the landmark NSW Riverina property Gundaline.

The 14,916-hectare farm is a major cotton producer and was once a jewel of the Kahlbetzer family's Twynam Group, which sold it in 2014 for about $25 million.

Mid-year saw Gina Rinehart's S Kidman & Co offload four properties across 2.43 million hectares in Queensland and the Northern Territory for a reported $200 million.

At the back end of the year, in November, the Riverina again showed its attraction, with poultry pioneer David Bartter's 26,839 hectare Ballandry aggregation in the NSW Riverina selling for around $120 million.

The 16-property aggregation was bought by a farmer and a Canadian investment fund, and included 45,457 Murrumbidgee Irrigation Delivery Entitlements and the 2023 crop planted across 21,833 hectares.

Also that month, the 4033-hectare historic sheep property Greystones, near Bacchus Marsh in central west Victoria sold to Chinese interests for $80 million, or $19,836 a hectare.

And to prove the corporate interest remained strong, the end of November saw the sale of the three-million hectare Kimberley Cattle Portfolio in Western Australia for $300 million.

Chinese-backed Archstone Investment Group sold the portfolio to Canada's Alberta Investment Management Corporation - the owner of Lawsons Grains - and Sydney-based New Agriculture.

Lawsons Grains also purchased the 13,000-hectare Jemalong Station in NSW's Lachlan Valley for $85 million in August.

The top quartet of price-per-hectare sales for 2023 were all in Victoria, and included one operating dairy farm and two former dairy properties.

Three were in Gippsland - a 40-hectare grazing property at Cape Paterson for $125,000 a hectare ($5 million sale price), an 86-hectare grazing-dairy farm at Wonthaggi for $54437 a hectare, and a 66-hectare dairy farm in Nambrok for $45,445 a hectare - while a grazing-dairy property at Warrnambool in the state's southwest fetched $42,683 a hectare.

The Nambrok dairy farm was not even on the market, with a duel between neighbours resulting in what was believed to be a local record of $18,293 an acre. Most notably, it sold in late November, when many observers believed the price peak may have passed.

South Australia's Yorke Peninsula proved a hotspot, with a 630-acre (255 hectare) parcel of prime cropping country at Maitland selling for $9.6 million or $37,647/ha ($15,238 an acre ), touted as a record for the region.

Not far behind was the nearby 307 hectares of premium cropping country at Arthurton, which sold for $32,248 a hectare, or $13,026 an acre.

It was one of many local property price records across the nation in 2023. These included:

At the other end of the scale were the S Kidman & Co stations for $83 a hectare and the Kimberley Cattle Portfolio, which fetched $100 a hectare across three million hectares.

Stewarts Well Station in South Australia, billed as "Australia's cheapest outback station" saw the perpetual lease of 3554 hectares fetch $1 million, or just $262 a hectare.