Teen runaway Sidney Kidman went on to own greatest pastoral holding

Written on the 16 October 2016

For any cashed-up businessman interested in the bright future of agriculture, snaring the prized ­Kidman cattle empire is akin to a small prospector seizing BHP Billiton. It instantly hands over control of nine prime cattle stations strung from Western Australia's east Kimberley across the Northern Territory's grassy Barkly Tableland, down to the rich Channel Country of southwest Queensland and leading into South Australia, and ownership of a land area bigger than Tasmania.

Pending Foreign Investment Review Board appro­val, the $365 million deal also ­delivers S. Kidman and Co's new owners expected to be Australia's richest woman, Gina Rinehart, and her Chinese billionaire partner, Gui Guojie, through their respective companies, Hancock Prospecting and Shanghai CRED 200,000 high-quality cattle and control of one of the country's best rural management teams.

But the beauty of buying the Kidman empire nearly in its ­entirety apart from the world's largest pastoral property, Anna Creek Station, set to be bought by the neighbouring Williams family is that the farming model perfected in 1899 by its founder and legendary cattle king, Sidney Kidman, still works.

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Source: The Australian