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a memorial plaque in the foyer of King’s College at St Lucia at the University of Queensland. It is also on a
plaque honouring Methodist ‘martyrs’ (most of them victims of the sinking of Montevideo Maru) located at the
Uniting Church Centre for Ministry at North Parramatta. His photograph hangs in Kentish Court at Wesley Central
Mission’s Sinnamon Retirement Village, near Jindalee in Brisbane.
R Brown & O P Studdy-Clift, Darwin Dilemmas, 1992; J W Burton, The First Century, 1955; W S Chaseling, ‘The Late Rev L Kentish, BA,
BD’, The Missionary Review, December, 1946; The Courier Mail, 8 October 1946, 12 August 1953; JW Dixon, ‘Life on Goulburn Island’
(Extracts from a broadcast address by A H M Ellison), The Methodist, 9 July, 1955; G Dundon, ‘Patricia Cam’, The Gosford Star, 19 October,
1984; A Gill, ‘When the War Hit Home’, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 January 1993; A Gill & A Demack, ‘Kentish Wartime Drama was
50 Years Ago this Month’, Journey, February 1993; O Griffiths, Darwin Drama, 1943; J Leggoe, Trying To Be Sailors, 1983; D Lockwood,
Australia’s Pearl Harbour,1966; J McClelland, Proceedings of an Australian Military Court, 1993; M McKenzie, Mission to Arnhem Land,
1976; A Powell, The Shadow’s Edge, 1988; The Queensland Methodist Times, 9 January 1947; 18 November 1948; E Shepherdson, Half a
Century in Arnhem Land, 1981; M Somerville, They Crossed a Continent, 1951; The Story of the Disappearance of the Reverend Len Kentish,
1992; The Sun, 18 February 1975; Truth, 29 August 1948, 5 September 1948, 12 September 1948, 10 October 1948; A Wilson, ‘The Kentish
Affairs’, The Journal of the Aircraft Owners’ and Pilots’ Association, December 1979.
NOEL KENTISH, Vol 3.KHAN-PERI, CONSTANTINE (CON): see PERRY, CONSTANTINE (CON)KIDMAN, (Sir) SIDNEY (1857–1935), pastoralist, was born near Adelaide on 9 May 1857, third son of
George Kidman, farmer, and his wife Elizabeth May, nee Nunn, both English-born. There are many unfounded
legends about the early career of Sidney Kidman, none more persistent than the myth that as a child he left home
with just five Shillings and a one-eyed horse. In fact, the Kidman family was sufficiently well off to ensure that
Sidney had at least a brief private school education in Adelaide.
When he left school, it was natural, given the family’s farming background, that Sidney Kidman should look to
the land. His elder brother Sackville Kidman found work for him on stations in the far west of New South Wales,
in the ‘corner country’ which was later to become the heartland of the Kidman pastoral empire.
By the time he was 20 years old Kidman had a bullock team and he was doing well, carrying to the new mining
town of Cobar. Already he had learned from the exploits of men like C B Fisher and James Tyson that there was
more money to be made by bringing beef and beer to the mining fields than there was by actually digging minerals
out of the ground.
Soon after, Kidman got his big start through a legacy of 400 Pounds from his grandfather. With this fund he
started stock dealing on a large scale, buying cattle in remote places and taking them to markets on the mining
fields and in Adelaide. He quickly saw and exploited the fact that South Australia rarely produced enough beef
for its own markets. The strategies that shaped his later acquisition of a chain of stations from the north of the
continent to the south were based on his keen appreciation of this situation.
Kidman clearly modelled his personal life and business methods on James Tyson, the son of a convict who
became a drover, then a stock dealer, and eventually the owner of a huge chain of high-quality stations. Tyson was
frugal to the point of meanness, he was abstemious and he never swore. Kidman emulated all these characteristics,
as well as Tyson’s foible of anonymously riding through the outback to observe his men and his country and to
overhear what was being said about him.
Both men had a flair for livestock dealing, and here Kidman probably eclipsed Tyson to become the most
spectacular buyer and seller that Australia has known. Rarely did Kidman’s judgement in the marketplace fail him,
although he made one bad mistake early in his career when he exchanged a one-fourteenth share in a new mining
company, called BHP, for a small mob of bullocks.
In the early 1880s, Kidman was ready to begin the station purchases that were to make him, in terms of area,
probably the biggest landholder in Australian history. His plan was to acquire contiguous holdings in key locations,
so that he could move stock progressively from north to south, toward the nation’s most active and buoyant
markets.
Kidman’s method was to buy established existing stations, usually in remote and arid regions. Despite recent
adulatory reconstructions of history that have endeavoured to present him as a great developer of the inland,
Kidman never pioneered a single square mile of new country. Rather, he waited until he could buy out the original
pioneers cheaply. Thus, he traded on the misfortunes of others, but it must be said that anxious vendors were
pleased to see him as a buyer of last resort. This was especially true during the drought years of the 1890s when
his empire took shape.
Often Kidman bought a share from a desperate pastoralist, on the basis that the partner would look after the
property. Kidman knew that he would thereby get the best possible management. It was in this way that Kidman
acquired his first Northern Territory interests, in Owen Springs and Crown Point stations.
Old timers said that two things happened when Kidman bought a station; first, it rained and then the fences
fell down. Kidman bought during droughts, knowing that it had to rain eventually. He had the resources to wait
patiently until the droughts broke. Fences did fall down because Kidman forbade any station expenditure that was
not directly productive. Managers had to make do with whatever improvements the pioneers had left behind.
At first, this frugality was a prudent reaction against the over-capitalisation that had ruined the inland’s first
pastoral settlers, but later the neglected condition of Kidman’s stations became a matter of scandal. Northern
Territory lands administration files bulged with references critical of Kidman’s refusal to spend money on his
properties and the Pastoral Leases Investigation Committee of 1935 reported that Kidman’s ownership of land was