About Hanging Rock Beef and Speckle Park Stud


Why Speckle Park Cattle?

It all started when John and Ann Ellis were visiting the Royal Melbourne Show. They walked into the cattle arena just as the Speckle Parks were being judged. Initially the look of the animals caught their eye, however after talking to some of the breeders and finding out how great the meat was they decided that they would buy a bull- his name was Jim. 

From there the herd has grown, we now have a small herd of pure bred speckle park cattle. with a number of x bred cattle which will mostly be sold as meat. What started as a hobby for John and Ann has now grown into an influential business which focuses on breeding influential genetics for the breed.  

Speckle Park meat is exceptionally tender, has great marbling as well as even fat cover making the flavour of your beef remarkable. 

Since 2011 John & Ann have come across some amazing young people in the cattle industry that have shaped the last decade of their lives. This has meant that they have been able to grow the stud from a hobby farm to include: fitting and livestock services, livestock transport, genetic services and showing cattle. For more information on this and more see the Speckle Park Stud & Services section of this website.

Our Beef Moto

John, Ann and their family have always had a passion for good quality meat but has always found it frustrating that the tracability in the industry makes that hard to find. Their daughter Ruth had always thought that if she wasn't going to be in wine (the industry in which she grew up) then she would want to market beef. For her, when she buys a bottle of wine, she wants to know as much about it as possible and it seems that many other people do too. We want to know where the vineyard is, the way the wine was made, what vintage and variety it is and even what food would go well with it.

Why don't we ask the same questions of our beef?

It is for this reason that every piece of Hanging Rock Beef you might buy has as much detail as we can give you, including questions not often answered, such as:

How old was the animal?

How long was the carcass hung for?

Where did it grow up?

Is it a cross or pure bred?

Best wine matches?

Along with that, we can promise you that we love our cattle and we treat them with the up most respect. We never let them get too skinny and we work very closely with our nearest local abattoir to make sure that the animals go through as little stress as possible.