Receiving a grant from Governor Lachlan Macquarie in the Narellan area, the Tysons set themselves up as small farmers, later moving with their growing family to East Bargo.

As a youth James commenced work for neighbours such as Major Thomas Mitchell, and John Buckland who contracted him to take cattle to the north-eastern border area of the colony of Victoria.

Eventually they settled on land at the junction of the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee Rivers, in the reed-beds which had defeated John Oxley's exploration in 1837.

It was extended by canny buying, knowledge of cattle and of stockroutes, pastoral lending and the judicious selection of enormous leaseholds to provide a chain of supply which stretched from North Queensland to Gippsland and which fed beef to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

[11] In 1866 he purchased a group of pastoral runs: Wooroorooka, Rottenrow, Gordonsheet and Teckulman, all on the Warrego River and its tributary, Cuttaburra Creek.

Slow of speech, though astute and perceptive, "Jimmy" Tyson habitually dressed like a tradesman or boundary rider, and when he visited his various properties, he did so anonymously, preferring the swagmen's camp and the company of sundowners to the comfort of the manager's homestead.

In 1901, his remains were exhumed and re-buried in a family vault at St Peter's Anglican Church in Campbelltown, New South Wales;[6] [16] In 2010, the Hon James Tyson MLC was inducted into the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame, as Australia's first cattle king.