SID KIDMAN'S LEASES.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 160, 14 August 1916, Page 3

SID KIDMAN'S LEASES.

MONOPOLIST OE PIONEER? Sidney Kidman, whose vast pastoral leases appear to be under menace from the South Australian Labour Party, 'holds .16,000 square miles in South Australia, 2 ,000 square miles in Queensland and 4000 square miles in New South Wales. Mr Blundell, Minister for Industries in South Australia, says that the "greater portion of the pastoral country is not stocked or utilised as it ought to be; and one man, namely, •Mr Kidman, is preventing others from stocking or utilising it." That is only one way of looking at the matter. Sid Kidman placed his hugest leaseholds in places where nobody else went, and maybe but for him there are great areas which would not have been stocked or utilised at all.

He may call the Cattle King a monopolist, or he may reflect that only by the pioneering of the Kidmans can a wilderness come to be populated, threaded with railways an d studded with cities like the shaded rectangles on the map. If a monopolist, Mr Kidman is one of the most modest kind. He left his home near Adelaide to make his own living when he was 13 years old, and at one time he worked as a cowboy for 10s a week. Now a millionaire, he, with his family, still lives in the quietest fashion, Sid Kidman's extreme simplicity of dress and manner has given currency to many stories. One is the turkey story. He was introduced to a stranger, who, sizing him up, asked: "Anything to do with droving?" Kidman remained silent; but the acquaintance answered, "He is the man who brought a drove oftuukeys from Bourke to Broken Hill." There is one man who has ever since thought of Kidman only as the "Turkey King." His character as a turkey-drover is related in many variants of the story.

Having amass?:! riches, Mr Kidman bethought himself of the necessity of making the grand tour. One

afternoon when High Holborn was thronged with scurrying thousnads, passing the block of ancftent buildings which alone escaped the Great Fire of London, a plainly-dressed, weather-beaten man in a slouch hat, carrying a travel stained valise of the old portmanteau type, turned into High Holborn from Grey's Inn Eoad, stood bewildered for a moment by the clangour and the clamour of the traffic, scratched his head, and then putting

his valise on the pavement sat down on it, shoved a veteran pipe in his mouth, and with a furrowed brow and half closed eyes began to work out his bearings. The multitude surging past gazed at the lone farer who apparently could find no other resting place than the public street. The forlorn smoker was the cattle king of Australia, enjoying his smoke-oh in the capital of England, a country somewhat smaller, than the total area of his cattle-runs.