AUSTRALIAN CATTLE KING.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 1222, 10 June 1919, Page 6

AUSTRALIAN CATTLE KING.

It may he safely stated that Mr Sidney Kidman, th> Cattle King of Australia, is a millionaire. He Iwgan life with nothing, and to-day he probably does not know within some thousands what he is really worth. -Mr Kidman will retire from his gigantic business interests next year. In round figures, ih'e Cat tie King at present has dominion over -IB.floo square miles of outback Australia,or, in acres, 30,000,000, and he owns more than 20,000 cattle anil 20,000 horses. Mr Kidman struck out on his own account when he was 13. and his first job was as a cowboy at- 10s a week on the Mount C.ipps station, in the north-east country. He fold Mr (•'. H. Knibbs, C.M.0., chairman of the Pastoral Taxation Commission in Adelaide, that when he n-ki d his boss for a rise he got the sack. Yet to-day Mr Kidman is payin «r his own drover £1 per day. When h<- "got the sack'* he went bullock droving on the Darling, and at 21 got a family legacy of £4o''. With the monev he bought a mob of horses, sold them at a profit, wid purchased more. And so on, witr horses, bullocks, and cows, until !••» owned more land than anv other niai in the British Kmpire and became the largest stork deater in Australia. T» foughout his romantic and slrcnuoii* career Mr Kidman has bad a lot o! luck, but he had none the dav he sol* a fourteenth -hare in Broken Hill fc £IOO. S.x months later it reali*-* £■*»(), mi I Still, veing he got the rvnp of paper for 10 culls of a mob ol i"iitle, worth then s 2s, he made a fair profit.