Dr Neil Béchervaise

NB Consulting (Australasia) Pty Ltd

CATTLE KING

Ion Idress

Angus & Robertson

1996

TeacherÕs notes- Dr Neil E. BŽchervaise

Overview

First published in 1936, the year after Sid Kidman died, this is the biography of the self-made man who at one point owned property stretching from the north coasts of Queensland and Western Australia into South Australia, more than the total area of Victoria. He provided meat and horses to England and India, built ships for the Australian navy and witnessed the discovery of silver at Broken Hill, opal at Lighting Ridge and the goldfields in Kalgoolie, Coolgardie and the Kimberleys. He co-owned one of the most extensive stage-coach lines in Australia and holds a world record for droving the largest mob of cattle ever moved.

Sidney KidmanÕs family carried on his vast enterprises after his death and the family name now crosses modern movie screens. Despite his larger than life achievements, Kidman comes across as a simple man, even-tempered, a good listener with an incredible memory and a single-minded ambition. He left home aged thirteen with a half-blind horse, a saddle and enough money to last a week. He died a multi-millionaire 65 years later.

KidmanÕs story is one of epic proportions in the history of Australia. It spans Federation and makes absorbing reading for those who are excited by the figures that mark the growth of the nation.

Idress has written the biographies of some of the great names in 19th century outback settlement and, together they provide a fascinating record from an author who provides an oral historical link with that past. Kidman, Flynn of the Inland and Lasseter Ð whose legendary gold reef has never been found Ð each plays a part in this history. Against this background, Idress displays contemporary attitudes to the aborigines, and the roles of our pioneering women and early squatters. The incredible journeys and exploration of drovers, miners and swagmen each come into focus and we feel the mix of desolation and exhilaration that comes with the achievement of ambition.

Cattle King is written with a measured mix of personal knowledge, written records and oral history that removes it from the totally literary of the "Boys Own" adventure while grounding it in primary historical sources and expanding its interest level with often insightful anecdotes.

Student pre-reading activities

Bare-armed drovers walking mobs of cattle across barren ground towards a distant windmill. Working in small groups, decide what images the cover design suggests for you and then consider whether the cover notes support this visual image.

Identify recent books about celebrities that have been published soon after their deaths. Discuss the reasons for rapid publication. Consider the effect these reasons might have on the quality of the book. Cattle King was first published in 1936, the year after Sir Sidney Kidman died. Suggest how you think this rapid completion and publication of the biography might affect the way it is written. As you read the novel, keep notes of elements that support and refute your initial opinions.

The Story

Leaving home at thirteen in pursuit of his older brother, who is droving cattle north of Adelaide, Sid soon loses his horse and almost his life. Determining that water is essential for survival and for future development, he begins a journey of personal and environmental discovery and growth. Having begun alone, he carries out almost all of his major work alone. Forming partnerships when jobs are too huge and cutting his losses as he moves, Kidman trades in horses and cattle as he learns about the great waterways of central Australia.

Telephone and railway lines promise to revolutionise stock movement but it is KidmanÕs experience that makes the great movements to railheads possible. His involvement in selling horses to Cobb and Co coach company leads him into a coaching partnership that eventually covers outback New South Wales.

Battling flood and drought, he gradually builds property holdings that allow him to keep his cattle near water wherever he takes them. A keen judge of character, he rewards the people he works with and relies on their ability and loyalty to maintain his developing Kingdom.

His marriage to a Ôlittle Scottish schoolteacherÕ provides him initially with a homebase at Kapunda, near Adelaide, and a family who will eventually succeed him. In collaboration with his brothers, Kidman develops knowledge and interests in all stages of livestock production and eventually sells livestock, meat, wool and horses across the world.

Life for Sid Kidman is a constant battle against the environment but seldom against his fellow man. An enlightened and benevolent learner, he gains much from his relationships with the Aborigines and from supporting both young men seeking a life on the land and battling farmers and their widows. KidmanÕs death as a rheumatic, almost deaf old man belies the action his life had seen and the contribution he had made to the development of Australia as a world-renowned cattle country.

Student activities

As you read the novel, develop a plot outline separating the story of Sid Kidman from the facts and figures and from the stories of his brothers and the men he works with. Use your findings to identify the major differences between Kidman and those he works with. Discuss whether you agree with the authorÕs view that Kidman was. Or is there a different way of viewing his life?

Kidman told the author, "I was much too busy in those days to keep a diary." How different do you think the book might have been if Idress had been able to read diaries written by Kidman? Discuss the evidence for your opinions.

Young Sid learns much from his aboriginal friend Billy when he shepherds for Harry Raines [p.18]. Suggest how his attitude to Billy is different from that of the author. What textual information can you find to support your opinion?

Idress seems unable to develop a sense of character for his protagonist through the narrative. Instead he provides anecdotes which appear to stand outside of the main storyline. Provide examples to support or reject this opinion and debate whether it is a strength or weakness of the biography.

KidmanÕs kindness in providing a windmill for the widow [p197] is a single example of his generosity. What other qualities are demonstrated in similar anecdotes?

KidmanÕs sense of humour is best displayed in his recollection to the author of stories told by others. Stories of dogs making spectacular jumps and snakes with lethal venom are sprinkled through the biography. Identify these and use them as the basis for a collection of Kidman camp-fire stories. Find direct examples of KidmanÕs sense of humour and suggest how these add to our understanding of how the man was able to gain such strong loyalty from his employees.

Money: can be used to track KidmanÕs success once the reader understands that there are 12 pennies in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound so that £2-7-6 means 2 pounds or 40 shillings + 7 shillings + 6 pence [or half a shilling] Ð a total of 47.5 shillings. The guinea is £1-1-0 or 21 shillings. Sid Kidman set out with 5 shillings to his name Ð probably equivalent to about 50 dollars today. His account for one year of train travel [p.215/216] in todayÕs terms might equal close to 30 million dollars! But today he might travel by private plane with a personal pilot.

Themes

Ambition: Sidney KidmanÕs ambition is very personal. It is driven by his determination to succeed in a challenging environment. In this sense, he is different from most settlers who seek to battle with and conquer their environment.

Aborigines: Changes in attitudes and approaches to Aborigines have been substantial since Kidman was a boy. At least three views are presented in Cattle King. The author depicts Kidman as displaying no difference in attitude toward one person or another, regardless of their cultural background. He learns from Billy when others might laugh at his fear of spirits, he respects and admires the stockmen he works with and he expresses genuine sympathy when he hears of the death of Topsy, "She had seen her tribe in its glory; she had lived through its decay. And now, abandoned in death, she lay with her mangy mongrel snarling over her." "Poor old soul!" said Kidman. Bury her decently, boys. And donÕt hurt the dog."

Idress, himself, reflects a second view of the once Ônoble savageÕ now doomed to extinction surrounded by Ômangy mongrelsÕ. Acknowledging the enthusiasm of the anthropologists of his time in their attempts to show Aborigines as a primitive left-over from the stone-age, Idress regrets their destruction by white introduced diseases such as influenza but he appears to be relatively untouched by the reality he reports.

The author is less kind about those who display open racist intolerance to the aboriginal people though he accepts KidmanÕs daughter, GertrudeÕs observation that the two sisters could have had some fun with the two house-girls - if they had not been black.

Beliefs Ð religion/empire/war: KidmanÕs beliefs reflect his time and his ambitions. He believes strongly in the British Empire, sees England as the motherland and accepts that Australia should fight as an ally when Britain goes to war. His beliefs and feelings are sufficiently strong for Idress to note the sending of Australian troops to the Sudan and to the Boer War before Federation. Referring to the first world war as Ôthe four years of horrorÕ [p.188] he may be describing his own experiences in Gallipoli and Palestine with the 5th Australian Light Horse Regiment. He notes in separate observations that Kidman lost a vast sum building ships for the war effort and was later knighted for his efforts. Though Sid Kidman attends church with Ôthe wifeÕ, he spends his time there closing cattle deals. Religion is not a conscious element in his personality though he appears comfortable with the notion, as he says when he is dying, "When the good Lord gives me notice IÕll pack my swag and go."

Attitude to family: KidmanÕs family appears to be a closed book for Idress. Sid visits Kapunda, meets a young Scots woman and leaves. He sees her again on several apparently distantly timed occasions, marries her, learns to read and write with her, has daughters and a son, maybe others, and buys several houses for them to live in. It is difficult for the reader to see Sid Kidman as a loving husband and father because Idress provides insufficient detail to support a claim.

Attitudes to women and men: At every point, anecdotes suggest that Kidman got on easily with his fellow men because he listened and learned and respected their knowledge. He is shown to have formed partnerships easily and to have maintained friendships across a lifetime. As with the Aborigines, he respects and defends the Afghan camel drivers as contributing to the growth of the country. His assistance to the windmill widow and the crippled squatter with the lazy brothers suggest his open generosity and willingness to support everyone about him. His sense of humour and willingness to help young people learn as he grew are clearly identified.

Environment: Sidney Kidman worked livestock across the remote low rainfall regions of Australia before most of the modern-day scourges of the environment had been identified. The rabbit plagues he came to recognise as destroying pasture and timber on marginal land were unknown in his early years. Tick infestations and cane toads were unknown to the boy and land clearing was believed to be an essential tool in the battle against an unkind land.

KidmanÕs recognition of the value of continuous water supplies and his formal recognition of the great outback waterways in establishing his empire was a major factor in AustraliaÕs early outback development. His acceptance and intelligent diversion of artesian bore water into natural creeks and rivers added to their value. His ÔspellingÕ of land and recognition of stock grazing demands allowed him to nurture his land where others overstocked and created dust-bowls.

Student activities

Mudmaps [p.62] is an important figure in KidmanÕs education. Use a sandbox or wet mud to construct a mudmap of the great outback waterways using the description provided in the book. Compare your mudmap with a map of the area.

Consider how our present attitudes to Aborigines have changed since Kidman was a boy. Suggest how the Ônoble savageÕ approach still affects some current thinking. Prepare to debate the statement, Ôwe cannot maintain a first nation civilisation at the same time as we educate them to take their place in the modern worldÕ.

There is no place for women on the frontiers of civilisation. ItÕs a manÕs world out thereÕ. Do you agree? Use your knowledge of Cattle King to support your opinion. Does the time and the place make a difference to the role women can play in modern exploration and development?

Find examples to suggest how KidmanÕs non-combative approach to the land and animals works to help him succeed where others fail.

Working in small groups, develop a list of the values and beliefs of Sidney Kidman presented in the novel. Use these to write a character sketch of the man in which you establish how he would fit in to todayÕs society.

Language

Idress seems perpetually uneasy with the style of his biography. Within the framework of some elegant literary description, he establishes that he is a highly capable and evocative observer of the Australian landscape through its wild variety of seasons. At the other literary extreme, he offers a huge volume of statistics and lists of properties and cattle numbers and distances and times that make accounting seem simple. The distanced narrative that Idress develops is amazingly impersonal and free from description of feelings for people Ð the Scottish wife never seems real though, clearly, she is the love of KidmanÕs life and his closest friend. He offers a chain of anecdotes which appear to have been told by KidmanÕs friends and acquaintances and, finally, he offers the information that he has spoken to Kidman and listened to his stories.

The difficulty Idress appears to have with his material can be considered from a number of perspectives. He may have planned and written much of the biography while travelling for other reasons and drawn it together when he finally met Kidman; he may have been rushed by an eager publisher wishing to capitalise on KidmanÕs recent death the publicity surrounding it; or he may have felt uncomfortable with his subject, and unable to make a personal connection.

Writing to todayÕs reader from the 1930s, Idress is necessarily an author of his times. His style often seems stilted and artificial to our ears, "Presently came a churn in the thunder as the mare turned one mob É While round and round them but far out flew the black mare, satanic in her knowledge." [p210]. But the style is poetic and sometimes the linking of KidmanÕs present with a greater past works effectively because of the authorÕs approach, "Here crawled serpents of unbelievable length, while over all flew fantastic birds with a terrifying breadth of webbed wing." [p.208]

Idress seems to have less difficulty reporting speech between men, "Anything doing about town?" "Plenty. Station stores going out across the border to the Paroo on the Queensland side ÉThereÕs plenty doing." "Any outside news?" "Yes, I hear rumours thereÕs gold being found away outÉ" [p.48]

Speech between Kidman and women is limited to several brief discussions reported with his wife and a brief exchange with the windmill widow [p.198]. His daughters appear to talk more easily among themselves and perhaps this is IdressÕ problem as Kidman appears to be almost completely self-contained.

For many readers, the gulf between IdressÕ style and their own expectations will be difficult to bridge. Recollections of changing speech patterns, levels of social formality and social class difference will be important in establishing the connections. To make this easier, film depictions of the period and locations may be useful.

Films as resource

Jedda: Filmed in the early 1950s, Jedda reflects the late period of KidmanÕs life. Homestead life, droving, isolation and the ambivalent attitude to Aborigines are focused in the white education of Jedda followed by her abduction and death within her traditional culture

The Irishman: From squatters to bullock-droving, from mining to timber-cutting, the film charts changes to rural lifestyle and the gradual overcoming of distance achieved by the introduction of rail, telegraph and the automobile.

Robbery Under Arms: Film version of Rolf BoldrewoodÕs fictionalised account of the greatest cattle theft in the worldÕs history [p. 16]. The droving and squatter lives typical of KidmanÕs early years are well depicted.

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith: Set at the point of federation, the film depicts attitudes and reflects squatter life at the mid-period in KidmanÕs life. Jimmie is seen as a caricature of a real man by the whites he works with. His acceptance of white beliefs and values leads to his death.

Perspectives on the novel

Another lifetime past the original publication of the book [65 years ago], Ion Idress seems to be an author of his time. Maybe he was preoccupied with the need to see men as heroes after so many had been killed less than twenty years before. Maybe, like Hemingway, he was fascinated by the workings of a world of men without women. Whatever his motives, Idress established a larger-than-life figure in the Australian depression-era landscape. Surviving against all odds in a constant struggle to tame the outback, his character provides an almost superhuman picture of achievement. Whether he could be sustained against a twenty-first century background is difficult to measure. Tycoons like Lang Hancock who discovered and opened up the Pilbarra for iron-mining are also from a past generation Ð often with their stories still to be written. Women like Janet Holmes-a-Court, however, still run large pastoral leases after their husbands die. Perhaps we are only as far removed from the pioneering spirit as our imagination and ambition take us.

From another perspective, Sidney Kidman is the product of a by-gone era where men would leave their women alone and pregnant then isolated for years on end while they went off seeking their own personal glory. Kidman abandons his widowed mother and then deserts Ôthe wifeÕ as soon as he has learnt enough from her to conduct a business. Bell is left to bring up his children with an Ôoccasional fatherÕ dropping by to tell her how much money he has made or lost. While he rides with Ôthe boysÕ to fulfil his ambition, and gives windmills to poor widows to lighten their load, his own brothers try to sort his undisciplined buying and establish their own lives. The land might be settled by selfish and determined loners but they spread a lot of misery in their wake.

But surely, Sidney Kidman was a great man. An early leader in the fight to conserve the environment. He introduced controlled grazing of marginal lands, developed scientific approaches to water conservation and opened up vast areas of land to livestock that before had only been desert. His closing of some properties and combining with others helped establish more sustainable livelihoods for the eventual owners. In the process, he helped numerous men find their place in life, provided for his family and established Australia as one of the leading cattle countries in the world. He provided food for a war-weary Britain, horses for India, breeding cattle for Indonesia and established a coach service that connected remote outback areas before the automobile and the made road was even a possibility.

Student activities

Imagine that you have been asked to write the script for a film version of Cattle King. Make a list of the scenes you will include in the film and another list of scenes you will drop. Discuss the reasons for using some scenes but not others. What perspective is favoured by the scenes you have decided to include?

Wave Hill station [p.138] was the scene of one of the most significant events in modern Aboriginal history. Research the events of Wave Hill station and suggest how you believe Sidney Kidman would have responded to the action if he had been alive.

Extended Resources

Short Stories, Novels and Poetry: by Dal Stivens, Ion Idress, Katherine Susannah Pritchard; Mary Durack; Aeneas Gunn, Patsy Adam Smith.

Websites developed - Academic index - Biography - Contact