“We were stoked with the weekend, as it was a long time in the making,” Mr Kelly said.
“We have been trying to make it happen for a couple of years, as the actual 150th year was last year, but we couldn’t get that done due to COVID-19.
“What I loved about the weekend was everyone was really genuinely interested in everyone else.
“Everyone was reminiscing and bringing up all the nostalgia of all the years that they have travelled up to the farm to milk cows and help with things around the property.
About 50 family members attended, coming far and wide from Sydney, Melbourne, Bendigo and Queensland, as well as those living locally to Wharparilla.
“We are up to the sixth generation of Kellys on the property, as I’m the fifth and there are nieces and nephews after me,” he said.
The oldest members of the family at the reunion were John Kelly and Betty Dean, the third generation associated with the property.
“They are my pop’s, Mark Daniel Kelly’s siblings and they grew up here in the ’20s and ’30s, spending lots of years on the farm,” Mr Kelly said.
Named after the Shannon River in Ireland, the property was first farmed by Daniel and Bridget (nee Ryan) Kelly, after they settled a 320-acre leasehold, that they needed to continually improve in 1871.
“Uncle John Senior tells a story, that when he was going to and from school, he would have to ring bark the trees to help remove them, because at the time the trees were regarded as restricting crops' ability to grow, and in those days removing trees was considered an improvement to the land,” Mr Kelly said.
The couple came over from Ireland in the 1850s, originally living around Axedale near Bendigo.
Once settling on the farm, Daniel and Bridget Kelly had 10 children, with each of those children becoming a success in their own right, from doctors to a head of the tax department and bankers.
Mark Horatio Kelly was the one out of the 10 children that stayed on Shannon Park and took over farming it.
He later married Catherine Agnes, and together she and Mark Horatio had three children, John, Mark Daniel and Betty.
“John Kelly and my pop Dan, Mark Daniel, but we called him Dan Kelly, they ran the farm for a number of years, with all their kids running amok here on Shannon Park until they amicably separated and my pop took over running of the farm,” Mr Kelly said.
“Subsequently, my dad, Peter, has farmed Shannon farm in the years since.”
Originally a sheep farm for meat and wool, Mr Kelly was told that Shannon farm was one of the first in the district to grow wheat.
“What really changed the landscape of the farm was when the irrigation schemes opened up and they were able to start running water down bays, increasing the productivity significantly of the land,” he said.
“From then, I think it was sometime in the 1950s, dairy farming was introduced, but before then I think it was a bit of a mix of sheep and dairy, with a little bit of cropping.
“It became a dairy farm wholly and solely in 1959, for a good 30 years, before the farm went back into cropping in 2008.
“I grew up here, moving away to study agricultural science, before moving back a couple of years ago with my wife, Christy.
“We are settled into one of the old farm houses, the milker’s cottage as we call it, and are doing a little bit on the farm ourselves, having bought some land next to the home farm.
“I am hoping to continue on into the future and uphold the farming tradition, all things going well.”
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