TAKING BIG RISKS

Northern Advocate, 23 July 1923, Page 8

TAKING BIG RISKS

HOW KIDMAN MADE A FORTUNE,

OPERATIONS IN ARID AUS-

TRALIA,

The other day I asked a well-known man about town: "Wha is the richest man in Australia?" And he promptly replied: "Sir Sidney- Kidman," writes D. J. Quinnin the Sydney "Sun." A good many of the public, I daresay, entertain a similar opinion. For since the death of James Tyson, who was three times and more a millionaire, there has been no one whom the popular imagination has endowed with the Midas touch to the same extent as the "Cattle King" of Kapunda.

There is this in common between Tyson and Sir Sidney Kidman, that they both started out in life with nothing Each was the architect of his Own fortune. Born near Adelaide. .in 1857, young Kidman left home afr the age of thirteen, and became a cowboy on Mount Gipps Station, near the site of the present Broken Hill mines. When "the Hill" was discovered, ' Kidmau made his first deal. He exchanged ten steers for a fourteenth share, and sold out for £150, which he never got. All his life he was engaged in ventures of a speculative character. 'Mostly he has won out, but he has had many setbacks, and sometimes very heavy losses. On one station alone, during a 'spell of drought, he lost 70,000 sheep which he had purchased a*yeftit before at a high figure. Ask him ho\V many head of horses and cattle he has, and he frankly tells you he doesn 't.knOw. , His particular opportunity c&me after the drought of 1902, when numbers of stations in the far west of''Queensland,- practically denuded of stock, became almost valueless, and many leases were thrown in. Mr Kidman*'(as he then, was) bought or took up a number of. the*e stations and restocked them with, .cattle from the Gulf Country and the. Northern Territory. Giving evidence. before a Royal Commission inquiry into the meat trade in Sydney in 1912, Sir Sidney, referring to that drought, said that lots of owners were obliged to sell out for very little. Cattle stations sold out as low as 10/ a liqad, though he bought one place in Western Queensland for 8/, "with the horses thrown in.'' Another station in the Macdonnell Ranges he secured at 12/ a. head for the horses "and the cattle given in."

Some people have been disposed to criticise tho system which enables one man lo acquire the control of thousands of square miles for grazing purposes. In this connection, I quote some extracts from a letter written to the "Sydney Stock and Station Journal" in December, 1919, by Mr R. M. Pitt, lieafl of the well-known firm of fat stock salesmen:—"All the stations Mr Kidman acquired in Queensland were cattle runs, and the secret of success in dealing with such is to go in for sufficient water improvements, but keqp your expenses down. ... If Mr Kidman had not stocked those properties out there the probability is that tfhey would have remained unstoeked and unoccupied to this day, an obvious national loss. He had the financial resources and the courage to go in and 'try again where others had failed and given up in despair. And he has held on. . . . Whatever run he takes up he shakes it better for his having been there. Water improvements in particular he concentrates on, spending monpv freely in this respect,, and thev

are the basis of success in these dry rogions In the far .west of New South Wales, in the driest parts >of the whole State, Mr Kidman is again playing the part of rescuer. The country out there has been the grave of the hopes of many of our most enterprising pastor-Mists. They went, out with hopes running high, and made a brave light of it. and failed. Numbers of them have been ruined. It has been a will-o'-the-wisp country, luring men on to destruction. There have been a few good years, but the bad yeors have been many, and the average has been against the pioneers. . . . What the general public should recognise is that Mr Kidman goes right outside the settled and safe areas, takes the risk of going where the small men canrot and should not go, and few big men dare go, and there improves the country and adds generally to the meat an wool production of the Common-

v-pnlt»:. He is thereby a benefactor t'n his country ond as the venture is .a rare speculation, if he does have gfood fortune he i= entitled to it, as if he Inse-i no one would want to share the loss."