Olive Auction built this page from public records so buyers can find the estate. Its own people can claim it at no cost — complete the story, list lots, answer buyers.
After a claim, we confirm by emailEverything here comes from public sources — award lists, certification registers, the territory inventories. The rest of the story — the family, the grove, the real age of the trees, this year's lab sheet — only the mill can tell, and it is the part buyers bid on.
Cockatoo Grove presses at Cobram Station, on a bend of the Murray River in northern Victoria. The station began as a grazing run taken up in 1847 by Octavius Phillpotts, ran to 128,640 acres, and stayed with the Dick family for 110 years from 1880; the homestead they commissioned in 1906 was built from 250,000 bricks kilned on the property. By 1996 the holding had come down to 250 acres, and that year Joan and Ken Dugan bought it and planted it to olives, 20,000 trees of European origin by the producer's account, with a processing facility built on site. The first harvest gave roughly 30 tonnes of fruit for about 6,000 litres of oil.
The Dugans sold that earlier olive business on after a decade and began again organically under the Cockatoo Grove name. The grove is certified organic through ACO to Australia's National Standard for Organic and Bio-Dynamic produce, watered by underground drip, and pressed on site within hours of picking, with the oil held in oxygen-free stainless steel tanks at low temperature.
Two bottlings carry the record. At the 2022 New York International Olive Oil Competition the Classic Organic, an Arbequina, and the Midnight Organic, a Picual, both took Gold. Midnight is picked at night and pressed before first light; the 2025 run tested at 447 mg/kg polyphenols against 350 mg/kg for the Signature, and at the 2025 Australian International Olive Awards the Signature took a Silver and Midnight a Bronze.
From the public record: cockatoogrove.com.au · bestoliveoils.org · internationaloliveawardsaustralia.com.au
A producer account takes a minute — name, mill, region. We attach this profile the same day.
Lab numbers, tree references, harvest dates, a photo — the tap-through form asks only for what buyers pay for.
Auction with a confidential reserve, or a fixed-price allocation. We review it and it goes live.
The catalogue goes to this list before it goes on the site. When the sale closes you get every hammer price from it — including the ones that disappointed.
Two emails. Then quiet until Sale No. 2.
