Life on an Outback station in the middle of Australia — the legacy of Sir Sidney Kidman

IT’S the biggest land sale ever held in Australia, a vast cattle empire created by Outback legend Sir Sidney Kidman. Nigel Austin drove 1000km to find what makes it special. See the gallery

Stockmen cook dinner during mustering at Macumba Station, Oodnadatta. Picture: Matt Turner.

EDDIE Nunn’s eyes light-up when he reaches the crest of the first sandhill on the western side of the Simpson Desert. Before him, a life-giving sea stretches to the next big dune rising up about a kilometre away. Beyond that, more water fills the land between more dunes as they march away across the top of the sprawling Macumba cattle station for more than 30km to its eastern boundary fence.

Flooding rains of up to 200mm in January ended a three-year drought here, and now the desert landscape bursts with life. In mid-winter, as the water slowly receded, the lowlands became a virtual feedlot for the sleek red santa gertrudis cattle that graze them. It promises cattle feed for 12 and maybe 18 months. The watery wonderland is also a refuge for ducks, swans, pelicans and wild turkeys.

The 120km fence on the eastern side is all that separates the vast cattle station from Australia’s most famous desert, the Simpson, which then continues for more than 300km, all the way to Birdsville. To the north is the Witjira National Park, while its south-eastern corner adjoins Lake Eyre National Park.

“Every sandhill from here right across the top of Macumba is like this with lakes of water in between,” says Nunn, who is the station manager. “That is the value of this country, the feed is still growing from the January rains and it will keep growing for months yet.

“We’re getting a similar benefit from the January flood down the Macumba River.

“It’s a big help, providing ideal fattening country. The Kidman places are the pick of the cattle country. They’ve got the run-out country; they knew which places to buy and which to hang on to.”

And this one, of all those owned by legendary cattle company S. Kidman and Co, is closest to the inland heart of Australia.

At 11,063sq km, Macumba is an enigma. Its average annual rainfall of just 148mm fits the description of a desert. It lies in the midst of deserts. In summer, the temperature reaches 50C — as hot as almost anywhere on the planet. In drought, the cattle, horses and wildlife struggle to survive.

Yet in a good year, it blooms into a Garden of Eden when rain and floodwaters from as far upstream as the Northern Territory flow down the Macumba River, making the vast cattle station far more valuable than its rainfall suggests.

Those floodwaters, supported by flows down the Stevenson and Alberga creeks, allow Nunn to put cattle on these lush native pastures at 12 months of age and send them to market as fat cattle at 18 months.

In years like this after rain, Nunn regards the feed on these lowland flats as the equal of any fattening country in Australia.

To get to Macumba, you first have to drive 1042km northwest from Adelaide to the tiny Outback town of Oodnadatta. From there, a lonely bush track leads the final 41km to the station homestead.

One of the great Outback properties owned by the Kidman family for more than a century, it is home to Nunn, his wife Gerry, a team of six stockmen, cook Megan Hibbs and machinery operator Roger Hunt.

Life is a constant round of cattle mustering on the third largest of the Kidman properties. Anna Creek station (23,677sq km), on its southern side and the world’s largest cattle property, is twice as big. Innamincka station (13,552sq km) in the north-eastern corner of South Australia, is also larger.

WATER is everything in the bush. The Cattle King Sir Sidney Kidman knew it better than anyone when he selected his chain of Outback cattle stations between the 1880s until his death in 1935. He realised that while water came from rain, critically for his properties, often it was rain falling far away in upstream catchment systems that was the most valuable.

This knowledge led to Kidman buying some of the nation’s best Outback stations, where the floodwaters often spread for kilometres on either side of a river’s banks, helping far exceed the value of rain that actually falls on them in a good year. The flood country is the key to success.

Eighty years after Kidman’s death, the nation’s largest private land holding is still owned mostly by family members. But not for much longer. The famous Outback cattle empire (owned by 58 shareholders, some comprising multiple family members) has been put on the market and is likely to be sold before the year is out.

It is a wrench for the Kidman descendants, who owe so much to the endeavours of their illustrious ancestor. But they have made up their minds, preferring to put money into personal enterprises. All up, the price tag is tipped to be more than $300 million for the 17 large pastoral leases (run as 10 operations) covering 101,411sq km across South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

The decision to sell, announced in April, prompted intense interest from dozens of wealthy Australian and overseas investors. And the prize is not just some of the nation’s best arid cattle country, but a slice of history. S. Kidman & Co’s owns some remarkable inland terrain, such as parts of the Painted Desert on Anna Creek, flood country on Macumba and beautiful jump-up country on Innamincka station, reminiscent of the backdrop for Hollywood westerns.

The empire includes the sublime cattle fattening Channel Country of western Queensland, and Helen Springs and Brunchilly, which run 55,000 cattle on the Barkly Tableland in the Northern Territory. Ruby Plains in the southern Kimberley region of Western Australia is home to the spectacular Wolfe Creek crater, formed by a 50,000-tonne meteorite, more than 250,000 years ago.

The properties also embrace a list of heritage sites of both state and national significance as well as Aboriginal heritage sites. They include the Peake Telegraph Station, the Burke and Wills burial site on Innamincka station, near the town of Innamincka, and various built heritage sites. It’s a part of Australia that most people never see but it is critically important.

Cattle long ago replaced wool as the backbone of inland Australia and remain an important part of the economic engine, driving the national economy, with exports worth almost $10 billion. And the Kidman empire is viewed by some as the greatest rural property trophy in the nation. There is no greater name in country Australia.

Few rural companies have provided such wealth to their shareholders and to Australia for so long.

The average annual rate of return to shareholders in the past 25 years has been 7.6 per cent before tax — about two-thirds capital gain in the land and a one-third dividend from agricultural earnings.

S. Kidman & Co has sold an average of 50,000 cattle each year almost since it was officially formed in 1899. That’s about 5.6 million head and a massive 1.5 million tonnes of beef during its history.

The company employs 160 people, down on the average 180 because of reduced herds and workload on Queensland properties because of drought.

It kicks in about $20 million to the rural economy directly through wages and transport costs, with 10-20 per cent of workers of indigenous background.

But will it sell? Leaving aside the Kidman name, buying interest is high because of the hard numbers: the beef cattle industry is at the forefront of a boom. Shrugging off the disastrous live cattle export ban in 2011 and drought across inland Queensland, it’s on the cusp of a new era.

As rising income levels improve lifestyles and beef consumption lifts around the world, demand is forecast to rise from 67 million tonnes of beef last year to more than 100 million tonnes by 2050.

After years of languishing at low levels, cattle prices have risen by 50 per cent in the past 18 months. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences forecasts cattle prices will rise another 35 per cent by 2019-20.

THE man who started it all ran away from his Adelaide home as a 13-year-old boy, on a one-eyed horse named Cyclops. Kidman was born in 1857 but his father died when he was just 14 months old. Determined to make his way in the world, he worked as a stockman and drover, establishing a small business with his brother Sackville, droving and trading cattle and horses.

They then set up a butcher shop in Cobar in central western NSW, before getting involved in businesses such as a coaching company that became the nation’s second largest in competition with Cobb and Co. Sid Kidman also briefly owned a 1/14th share in the Broken Hill Mining Company, before selling it for a quick profit. Realising his mistake, he tried to reverse his decision, but was too late to stop the mail.

The Kidman brothers bought their first pastoral property in the 1880s and soon started buying large tracts of Outback land.

On Sackville’s premature death, Sid Kidman officially founded S. Kidman & Co Ltd in 1899. Through hard work, discipline and shrewdness, he built it into the largest and most enduring pastoral empire in the nation’s history. It included two chains of properties, one extending from far north Queensland down through north-eastern SA, the other from the Northern Territory extended down along the western side of Lake Eyre to the Flinders Ranges.

Kidman chose properties wisely; his descendants retained the best. It’s why the Kidman empire is so valuable. The stations are well spread out and generally there is rain — or floodwaters — nourishing the country somewhere in the empire. In the inevitable dry times, the business is usually safeguarded from drought by the ability to move cattle around from one station to another in search of feed.

Stockmen cook dinner during mustering at Macumba Station, Oodnadatta. Picture: Matt Turner.

At one time or another, Kidman owned more than 150 stations covering 400,000-plus sq km of land, twice the size of England. He held a financial interest in 3.5 per cent of Australia’s land, an area larger than Victoria, when he died in 1935. He was by then one of the nation’s wealthiest people. The business then controlled 68 stations, more than 250,000sq km and ran more than 600,000 cattle.

The empire today is still the biggest in Australia at 101,411sq km, far larger than Tasmania (68,401sq km), and bigger than many countries, including South Korea and Austria. It includes 17 leasehold properties, carrying 151,497 branded cattle and 35,499 unbranded calves at March 31, less than average because of drought. The portfolio also includes 767 horses for mustering.

The company has pioneered better beef production in the Outback. It has progressed from selling five-year-old bullocks for US burgers 30 years ago to marketing two-year-old steers for higher- quality premium markets today. Its herd produces 15,000 tonnes of carcass beef equivalent each year, enough to feed about 500,000 people in markets in Australia, Japan, the US and South-East Asia.

And so much of that herd is out here, under the vastly experienced care of Eddie Nunn, in a place where the last vestiges of old Australia still survive. Nunn has been here for 16 years and has a remarkable knowledge of the country and its current herd of 6500 branded santa gertrudis cattle.

The Outback life of Australian cowboys

Eddie says the benefits of the emerging beef boom are flowing through to the station following the rise of steer prices from $800 each to more than $1200 in the past three years, while cow prices have increased from $600 to at least $1000.

Eddie’s father, Dick Nunn, managed Anna Creek station for 25 years and Eddie grew up on that vast property. It has given him the benefit of two generations of knowledge about the country, the people and the cattle.

Eddie tells his life story while driving a Kenworth semi-trailer on a four-hour drive from the Macumba headquarters to a stock camp 120km away: “I’ve worked for Kidman for 41 years, since I left school as a 14-year-old in June 1974. Dad sent me to work in the Aboriginal stock camp on Anna Creek with my brother Richard, when I was 15. He thought we’d learn more from the Aboriginal stockmen because of their bush skills and stockmanship. We spent most of the year in the stock camp, apart from four weeks off for Christmas and a few times during the year when we returned home.”

Mustering at Macumba Station, Oodnadatta. Picture: Matt Turner.

He stayed in the stock camp for four years, working seven days a week, often for several months at a time. The stock camp was one of several operating on Anna Creek at the time. Each had up to 12 people, in the days when there were close to 50 people on the payroll. Eddie became the Anna Creek head stockman at 21 and was managing The Peake, outstation to Anna Creek, by 25 in 1984. He stayed at The Peake for 14 years before his appointment as Macumba manager in 1998, becoming just the sixth manager in 110 years of Kidman ownership. He has perhaps seen the most changes of any era as modern communications and transport make life far different. Today, there are far fewer stockmen on the stations and they are just as likely to be women.

“It’s the end of an era,” he says of the sale of the Kidman empire. “I’m sad about it. I treat it like home because I’ve been there all my life. I’m a bit surprised, but not totally shocked that they put it up for sale because the kids come along and the family gets too big. “Kidman has always been very loyal to its employees. It is regarded as the best company to work for because they really value their staff and they pay people fairly. The hardest part of managing these stations is looking after the employees and keeping morale high, especially during summer and in drought. The cattle are a piece of cake.”

As Nunn drives the Kenworth back to the Macumba headquarters, it takes nearly four hours to transport a load of heifers the 120km, a journey that would have taken a team of men on horseback more than a week. The sale of S. Kidman & Co is the end of an era in more ways than one. Like his overseas counterparts — the Argentine gaucho and the cowboy of America’s “wild west” — the stockman has symbolised the real Australia since the early pioneers crossed the Blue Mountains and headed into the interior.

The old ways of the stockman and his horse are changing as progress and mechanisation tighten their grip. Horses are still used on Macumba for work such as cattle droving where there is no need for speed. But the stockman today is more likely to be mounted on a motorbike.

The city is a foreign place to these bushmen. Their leisure is often their horses and sports such as bronco branding, camp drafting, gymkhanas and horse racing.

Macumba is the birthplace of buck jumper Curio. To horsemen, her name ranks alongside those of 1930s racehorse Phar Lap, and Garryowen, a champion show horse who died in the fire that claimed his 29-year-old mistress as she tried to save him.

Now, around the campfire, there is apprehension. Who could be better than Kidman, almost universally regarded as a great manager of land, people and cattle. The sale is the most uncertain time for people on the stations since 1935 when Kidman died.

S. Kidman & Co has been run by managing director Greg Campbell — formerly its landcare manager — since 2001. The Kidman name is likely to continue because it is part of the sale and represents history and therefore brand and marketing potential for the new owners.

Macumba leading hand Jamie Kunze, 24, admits he was surprised by the decision to sell. “I didn’t see it coming, but I can understand though, all good things must come to an end,” he says. “It will be a sad day. When it comes down to it, I take pride in working for a company with such history and value to Australia. It would be a shame to see it sold to overseas investors.

“I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with people that have seemingly endless knowledge of the country and what we do. I love the lifestyle and the challenges that go with it, the fun you have, and you can sleep at night knowing you’ve done an honest day’s work. I don’t reckon you can beat the atmosphere and people that you get in the bush.”

Jamie laments the fact that more young people don’t head to the bush. “It’s hard to say why they don’t, but I reckon young people are getting harder to find simply because of the money chase,’’ he says. “I don’t think they know what they are missing; thrills are cheap out here. I won’t be going to the mining industry. The bush is in my blood.”