Barry Newcomen

Barry Newcomen collapsed and died on the morning of Thursday 15 October 2026 on his property at Ensay, while moving between holding pens as he worked cattle. He was 88. No further cause of death was made public. His death was reported by The Weekly Times and by Bryce Eishold in The Land.

Tributes came from Herefords Australia chair Marc Greening, Gippsland MP Darren Chester, who called him one of nature's true gentlemen, former Yarram Park stud owner Antony Baillieu and Swifts Creek grazier Bruce Commins, who described him as the heartbeat of the township. Funeral arrangements had not been published in the reports available at the time of writing.

Barry Newcomen was born in Bairnsdale, Victoria, in about 1938, into a farming family from the high country of East Gippsland. His father, who had served in the First World War, farmed at Ensay until his death, when Barry was 20.

He went to Ensay Primary School and then to Geelong Grammar. With his brothers Evan and Gerald he played for the Ensay Football Club, and the three of them were in the side that won the club's last premiership in 1964.

Newcomen started out as a stock and station agent with the Australian Mercantile, Land and Finance Company in Melbourne. In 1959 he returned to Ensay and bought 180 hectares in partnership with his brother Evan. Trading as BC and EO Newcomen for 34 years, the brothers expanded their holdings and built one of the best known commercial cattle herds in the region. They were also substantial wool growers: a former Elders wool manager recalled that they produced around 150 bales of medium wool a year, and their sheep were known for heavy cutting fleeces. The partnership later divided into separate family businesses, and the brothers farmed neighbouring properties along the Great Alpine Road.

In December 2001 Barry and his wife Topsy established the Newcomen Hereford stud as an extension of their commercial operation, whose calves had long topped the Mountain Calf Sales held at Ensay each March. The stud offered around 60 bulls a year at its autumn sale, and in March 2026 he held his 23rd on-property bull sale. He was willing to pay for top genetics, buying YavenVale Ripper R510 for 120,000 dollars and, in 2025, the year's top-priced Hereford bull, Kidman Head Master U070, for 50,000 dollars, an on-property record for the Kidman stud at Dubbo.

When the Australian Poll Hereford Society and the Australian Hereford Society merged in 2008, Newcomen became an inaugural board member of Herefords Australia. Its chair, Marc Greening, said he drove Hereford initiatives in the high country, including the Ensay weaner sales, and worked to position the breed as a valued part of the beef supply chain.

Newcomen served as a councillor on the Omeo Shire Council in the 1970s and 1980s and was instrumental in the development of the Dinner Plain alpine village. He was active in the Victorian Farmers Federation, and in January 2001 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for service to primary industry in East Gippsland, particularly through the federation, and to the community through social support, emergency services, sporting groups and local government.

In Ensay he was involved in the bush nursing centre, the calf sales and the recreation reserve, and local people said the nursing centre might not have survived without his work. When the general store was closing he tried to form a community group to buy it, and he donated steers for school agriculture trips to the Melbourne Royal Show. In early 2024 he led the project to paint a mural of Hereford cattle and high country stockmen, including himself, Topsy and fellow breeder Phillip Commins, on a fire water tank opposite the Ensay saleyards.

Newcomen was married to Topsy Newcomen for 66 years, and the couple ran the Hereford stud together. They had two children, Reece and Rowena, and four grandchildren; Reece and his wife Wendy farm at Ensay North and bought bulls at the family's sales. Friends described him as impeccably presented and as a stockman who was out of bed at 5am every morning for 60 years.

In late 2024, at the age of 86, he was seriously injured when four bulls knocked him down on his property. His young stud manager, Raelee Jager, secured the cattle, kept him still and directed emergency services, then ran the farm during his three weeks in hospital.

Newcomen is remembered as one of the figures who shaped the Hereford breed in the Victorian high country over six decades, both through his own herd and through his role in Herefords Australia and the Ensay calf and weaner sales. His contribution to Ensay, from the nursing centre to the saleyards mural that carries his image, earned him the description of a gentleman of the bush. Twenty days before his death he told Stock and Land that he had had a tremendous life.