AUSTRALIA'S CATTLE KING.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XIV, Issue 3310, 1 May 1909, Page 3

AUSTRALIA'S CATTLE KING.

REMARKABLE CAREER

A man. who left home when he was fourteen years of age, anu passed through Kapunda with a single horse, worked where Broken Hill now is for 10s a week, and who to-day owns or is interested in 50,000 square miles of country, had 20,000 cattle on the road at one time last year, paid the railways £23,313, in rent £6OOO, in wages £21,578, and who sold 2000 horses at one sale, and has 1700 working horses on his stations may be safely set down as a genius. This man, and an Australian every inch of him, is Mr Sydney Kidiman, who has by his own pluck, foresight, determination and abnormal energy achieved his dream and his ambition to be regarded as the Cattle King of Australia, and whose estates were recently taken over by a company with a capital of a quarter of a million.

The Cattle King was born in 1857. 1 left Adelaide, be said, in 1871. I bought a horse for £2 10s, and was making for New South Wales. Then I bought a team of bullocks, and went loading from Wentworth to Menindie and Wilcannia. At that time the drought was on, and they were paying £ls a ton for carting from Wentworth to Menindie, and £25 from Menindie to Wilcannia. Flour was from £6O to £75 per ton. 1 sold out my working bullocks, and went away to Cobar. I had a butcher’s shop there, and used to cart copper ore from Cobar to Bourke on the Darling. At this time Cobar in all directions was open country. There were a number of miner* and other people about, but there was no flour, tea or sugar to be had. I bought some bullocks and a lot of sugar, tea and other rations. At Cobar I sold the sugar at Is per pound, the salt at 6d per pound, the small tins of jam at 2s 6d each, and the soap at 5s a bar. I did not know much about trading, or would have bought tons more.

When he came of age Mr Kidman inherited a few hundreds from a relative, with which lie bought a number of horses, selling them at £2O a head. His story is one of steady endeavou and of steady increase in fortune. H turned his attention to cattle, hi: twice lost £IOO, and then drought came again. He left the drought region, bought 50 tons of chaff, and returning with it sold it at £3O a ton. Gradually he began to buy more and more cattle, entering into partnership with liis brother, the firm prospering until at one time in sheep alone they liad 50.000 to 60.000 on the road. Mr Kidman's success was won by sheer liard work and business capacity. At oiie period he held one-fourteenth share in Broken Hill, hut sold for a comparatively small sum to men who made a fortune out of tile share.