Sir Sidney KidmanPrint Page

The Kidman Bridge was named to commemorate Sir Sidney Kidman (1857 - 1935), who was Australia's largest landholder, and known as ‘The Cattle King'. 

Sidney Kidman worked his way up the pastoral industry via a series of tough jobs on outback stations, such as drover, bullock driver, and even an odd-job boy in a grog shanty. Following his mother's death in 1873, he received an annual stipend from his grandfather's will, before obtaining his full inheritance of £400 in 1878. Through astute investments, Kidman parleyed his inheritance into a healthy fortune. In 1887, he bought his first property, 'Thule' Station, near Charleville in Western Queensland, further cattle stations in the Northern Territory, South Australia, New South Wales, and Western Australia were to follow. Until by 1903, he owned 98,420 km² across Australia. By the end of World War One, he had become a national institution, having given fighter aeroplanes and other munificent gifts to the armed forces. In 1920 he gave to the Salvation Army £1000 and a half share in one of his cattle-stations. In 1921 he gave his country home at Kapunda, the scene of his annual horse-sales, to the South Australian government for a district high school.

Sidney Kidman was knighted for his services to pastoralism in 1921. When he died, at the age of 78, in 1935, Sir Sidney Kidman owned 3.5% of Australia's land, 68 cattle stations covering more than 250,000 km² running more than 600,000 cattle. In 2016, S Kidman & Co., the company he created in 1899, was still listed as one of the largest landholders in Australia.

A suggestion by Sir David Gordon that the new bridge now being built over the Breakout Creek on the Henley Beach road should be called Kidman Bridge to perpetuate the memory of the late Sir Sidney Kidman was approved by the West Torrens Council last night. It was pointed out that Sir Sidney Kidman gave portion of the land for the bridge and for the widening of the creek.
Advertiser (Adelaide), 24 December 1935.

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