Yandina Creek, since 1853
A cattle run first, and a venue second
This page follows the ground rather than the people who have held it. The dates are documented and the awards are dated and independent. Ownership across 170 years is recorded unevenly enough that naming anyone would mean choosing between accounts that do not agree.
The paddocks are still grazed and the Bando Brahman stud is still here. The events and the herd share the same ground, which is the whole difference between a working station and a barn dressed as one.
The record
What the documents actually say
Eight entries, oldest first. Each one is sourced from the venue's own history page, from council and industry awards, or from both.
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1853
The Yandina cattle run
The Yandina cattle run is established by the Skyring brothers, Daniel and Zachariah, who had arrived from England twenty years earlier aboard the S.S. Esther.
Daniel and Zachariah Skyring
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1856
Head station for four runs
The property becomes the head station for four cattle runs, Yandina, Canando, Whidlka-Whidlka and Pooreema, with leases reaching across what is now Cooroy, Tewantin, Eumundi and Yandina. Three of those four names are still in use on the property today, as the names of the guest cottages.
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Late 1970s
A bull depot for the Brahman stud
The property is purchased as a bull depot for a Brahman stud, returning it to the cattle work it was established for after seventy years of dairy and beef under earlier owners.
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1993
Restoration begins on site
Restoration of the homestead begins and the owners move on site, beginning the three-year project that turns a working station into a venue.
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December 1996
The Homestead opens as a venue
The restored Homestead opens as Yandina Station Restaurant and Function Venue. Weddings run on the property from this point.
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1997
Maroochy Shire award for Restoration
The restoration wins the Maroochy Shire Excellence in Building and Planning Award. An independent, dated, third-party judgment on the building work, which is worth more to a buyer than any adjective about heritage.
Maroochy Shire Council
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2011
Master Builders award for the cottages
The guest cottages win the Sunshine Coast Master Builders Award for Tourism Development, fourteen years after the homestead restoration took its own award.
Sunshine Coast Master Builders
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Today
A working station
The property still runs cattle and is home to the Bando Brahman stud. The events and the herd share the same ground.
Bando Brahman stud
1856 to tonight
From a lease name to a bed
Four runs were held from this head station in 1856. Yandina, Canando, Whidlka-Whidlka and Pooreema, with leases reaching across what is now Cooroy, Tewantin, Eumundi and Yandina. Three of those names never left the property. They are what the guest cottages are called, so a couple checking in on a Friday is sleeping under a word that arrived here as a pastoral lease.
That line is about 170 years long and nobody else on the Sunshine Coast can draw it. You can walk it in an afternoon. The cottages carry the run names, and the ridge they look at has not moved.
Judged by other people
Two awards, fourteen years apart
The homestead restoration took the Maroochy Shire Excellence in Building and Planning Award in 1997. The guest cottages took the Sunshine Coast Master Builders Award for Tourism Development in 2011. Both were awarded by bodies with no stake in the venue, which is worth more to somebody comparing venues than any adjective about heritage.
The Dairy Barn is the room most of that work leads to. It opens onto pasture through a bank of windows, and it has been hosting functions since the venue opened in December 1996.
Cattle run since
1853
Venue since
Dec 1996
Yandina Station Restaurant and Function Venue
A note on who has owned it
Published accounts of the ownership disagree, and we would rather say that than pick one. The events, dates and awards above are documented. Where a source names the people behind them, the name appears. Where the sources conflict, the line is left out until the record is straight.
The people you will actually deal with are on our team page, which is honest about the same gap.
Come and see it
The history reads better from the paddock
Tours run by appointment. Walk the six ceremony locations, stand in the Dairy Barn, and see how much of the 1853 property is still doing its original job.