By 1852 they had scattered and Monckton, after a brief sortie with Albert to the Californian and Victorian goldfields, was the only one left in the Little River district, as sole owner of the 26,500-acre (10,724 ha) Mowyong, later called Bareacres.
He later bought the South Brighton sheep station in the Wimmera where, in 1862, he was a member of the first Horsham District Roads Board, and a councillor in 1862-63.
The prize-winning superfine merino wools of the Western District had been extolled by the Thomas Shaws, C. H. MacKnight, J. L. Currie and others, but in the mid-1860s Synnot's letters to the papers queried their real value and gave rise to a drawn-out and sometimes bitter battle of words.
He bought large central city premises from the merchants and flour-millers, William Degraves & Co., and set up the Flinders Wool Warehouse in Flinders Lane: in this he followed the lead of his elder brother George who, opening in Geelong as a stock and station agent, had held one of the first auction sales of wool there in November 1858.
Synnot entered Melbourne wool-broking in prosperous and expansive times, when many firms were offering warehouse services, selling wool by auction or privately, or arranging and often financing its shipping for sale overseas.