A CATTLE KING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9119, 19 June 1908, Page 4

A CATTLE KING.

t "A man who left home when he was fourteen years of age, and 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 i miles of country, had 20,000 cattle on the road at one time last year, paid the railways £23,313, in rent £6,000, in wages £21,578, and who sold 2,000 horses at one sale, and has 1,700 working horses on his stations, may be safely set down as a genius." So writes an Australian journalist of Mr Sidney Kidman, who by his own pluck, foresight, and tremendous energy has made hiniself the Cattle King of Australia. Mr Kidman arrived in London recently, and gave interviewers some interesting details of his life. Mr Kidman, who was born in 1857, worked in the back country with varying success until he came of age. He drove bullocks, kept a butcher's shop, carted copper ore, and did a little trading. He sold sugar at a shilling a pound, salt at sixpence, and soap at five shillings a bar, and saw water sold at a shilling a bucket, and flour at £IOO a ton. When he came of age he inherited £4OO from a relative, and from that time he never really

looked back. Among his enterprises was a mail contract with a subsidy of £22,000. In carrying out this 1,200 horses were employed, and at one time he was paying £SOO a month for condensed water for 140 animals. To-day he owns 100,000 head of cattle and 10,000 horses. He is master of over 20,643 square miles of territory in Queensland, over 7.567 in South Australia, and more than 21,000 in New South Wales, the Northern Territory and elsewhere.