American Reacts to Single Australian Farm That’s Bigger Than 49 Countries 

Fun fact ... King Ranch in Texas, the biggest Ranch in the USA doesn't qualify in size to be classed as a station in Australia

I have just completed a 12month road trip around Australia and fascinating doesn't even begin to describe this amazing country.

Did you hear about the Texan rancher bragging to the Aussie station owner? He said his ranch was so big it took all day to ride the boundry on his horse. The Aussie dryly replied, yeah, I once had a horse like that.

Yes in Queensland, we laugh when American's say, as big as Texas or nothing is bigger than what they have in Texas. Texas fits into Qld 2.5 times!

FYI, Lake Eyre, is pronounced 'Air'. Woomera, 'woo-ma-rah'. While Anna Creek Station is the biggest, it is among a lot of stations across Australia that are all incredibly big. In the Kimberley's and the Pilbara, roundups are done with helicopters because it's impossible to find and round up the stock otherwise.

4:21 Australian farms also often use helicopters. The helicopter is used to locate groups of cattle, and then the pilot can direct the bike riders to the area.

A couple of years ago I posted on a similar video that a close friend of mine grew up on a sheep station larger than Scotland and the amount of flak I copped from people saying I was talking nonsense kind of dismayed me. Her driveway was over 90 kms long and by the age of 11 her dad let her drive down it to check if there was mail in the letter box. It was about a 3 hour round trip lol. I’ve visited quite a few stations in my time and spent a huge chunk of my life working in the outback and it’s a seriously big bit of empty. I love it there….

My dad did a charity motorbike ride around Australia for 6-8weeks. He's a registered nurse and with a bunch of other nurses and psychologists and psychiatrists who are also motorbike enthusiasts from all over the country they got together, called themselves Psychs on Bikes and went and visited remote communities to give free health checks and mental health checks and supports. I quite honestly hadn't seen him so happy and in his element. He sent me a picture one morning of a guy who'd just flown his helicopter to the local to grab coffees and take off again 😂 I'll get round to travelling the country one day, there's some amazing people with some amazing stories and priceless wisdoms and knowledge out there that I'd love to listen to and learn from

When I was a younger man I worked on an outback station on the Northern Territory Western Australia border as a bore runner and station hand it was over 6500 square kilometres . My boss Peter Sherwin owned many stations and at one stage owned the Equivalent of 6% of Australia’s landmass . Was a great experience but very Isolated and lonely . Left that to work in a coal mine in Queensland driving a giant dump truck . Special country the Kimberly country .

5:25 The cave houses are done because they remain nice and cool, even in summer. In winter, the rock absorbs the limited sunlight, keeping them warm.

I lived on a big property years ago and I asked the owner how big it was and he said he runs a hundred thousand head of rabbits in the back paddock and two hundred thousand head of wombats in the front..

Another famous family that had large station lease was the Duracks that had land in the Kimberley known as Argyle Downs.

6:00 From someone who is driven most of it, Yup, it is a land of extremes. And I have loved exploring every bit of it. The vast distances? I used to cannonball Townsville on the east coast to Alice springs and then back over a 3 day weekend (sometimes 2 days). That's a 4500km round trip (2796mi). But when you can have 250-300kms between towns, once you get away from the coast, it doesn't seam that far :) > 5:36 I have driven that stretch above when it looks like nothing but red dirt and death, and came back a week later after the storms and it is green and gold and alive with wild flower and life.

Lake Eyre is pronounced "air" not "ire"... the moment it was out of his mouth my teeth started to grate... also, Woomera is pronounced wum-a-rah (like woman but drop the "n"), the area was used as a nuclear test range in the 50s by the poms and still has defence department connections now...

When Sir Sydney Kidman died in 1935 it is estimated he owned land variously stated to have covered from 85,000 square miles (220,000 km2) to 107,000 square miles (280,000 km2), the latter figure equating to 3.7 per cent of the area of Australia's mainland. If his property holdings were a country it would be the 107 th biggest country in the world. Bigger than North Korea, Iceland, Portugal, Denmark, Switzerland, Taiwan and so on. Also, a while back you did a thing on the highway across the Nullabor Plain. Have a look at the Gunbarrel Highway. It consists of about 1,350 km (840 mi) of washaways, heavy corrugations, stone, sand and flood plains. The Gunbarrel Highway connects Victory Downs in the Northern Territory to Carnegie Station in Western Australia.

Lake Eyre is pronounced Lake Air.. Ive heard it pronounced a number of different ways but never the correct way... the one i loved the most was lake eerie.

I am the proud owner of 10 hectares (25 acres) of native bush in the Perth hills about 1 hours drive from the city centre my back fence is the boundary line of the Avon Valley National Park which is huge this means I have a lot of native wildlife roaming around. I often see Kangaroos and Wallabies etc when sitting on my back patio.

I lived in a dugout in Coober Pedy for about a year when I worked at the Opal Inn just before 9/11. Great place. The golf course green is created with sump oil. Speaking of road trips, 500km in a straight line, no fences, no hills, the occasional road train... isn't a lot of fun. You go a little stir crazy after a while but the sunsets are incredible. Imagine a huge red ball that covers literally half the horizon.

There used to be a cattle station bigger than the state of Texas. It was called Victoria Downs, after Queen Victoria, but got split between 2 sons when the father or grandfather died & became Victoria Downs & Elizabeth Downs - Queen Victoria & Queen Elizabeth.

My dad was a stockman at Alexandria Station back when it was 11,000 square miles and the biggest farm in the world. Before most of it had to get sold off because of a law restricting the amount of foreign ownership of Australian land was introduced. And back then they still used horses almost exclusively, it was long before helicopter herding.

G'day, I lived on a Cattle property in North West QLD, about 800SQ KM (500SQ Miles), They ran a small Caravan park and would get lits of "Grey Nomads" and "Backpackers", Good times. They ran about 6000 breeders.

Lake Eyre is actually pronounced “Lake Air” and not “Lake Ire” like the commentator said.

My partner and i have a holiday home at Coober pedy with an underground pool

Gads, so many mispronunciations it was painful. My Dad had the postal contract that ran from Leonora (Outback Western Australia, where we lived in the 1970s) to Wiluna, 180 miles each way. There’s not much out there except sheep stations, mining camps and small watering holes. “Mail” was anything from a letter to a truckload of diesel, bales of wool, kangaroo carcasses (for pet food), you name it.

I'm on 163 acres in Upper Hunter Valley NSW Australia that's considered tiny it's enough to get lost on love seeing American reactions to Australia awesome channel mate keep up the good work hottest day I've ever experienced was 53° in summer 45°+ is common

I used to operate a national help and hints line for games and other stuff we sold. It was 75c a minute. But I remember an old lady who'd call me every Wednesday arvo and have an hour long chat about nothing. Our rates were actually cheaper than interstate calls back then. She lived on a station somewhere in the NT. She was lonely. Her husband was away dawn to dusk every day. Who knows where. Kids had moved to the city. She spent all day using our creative editing software to make cards and stuff to send to her family. Typical Facebook Grandma, before Facebook. :) She'd ask if I could mail her some new formats, and then we'd just talk. Anyway, I loved her. Always looked forward to Wednesday arvo. Always made sure I'd done all my work. It sounds lonely out there...

The leasing arrangement is pretty common in the more arid areas as the government owns most of it. It's called Crown Land. But the leases are usually a 99 year lease and they are pretty much guaranteed to be renewed once the 99 years lapse. It's more of a weird administration oddity than a typical land lease. They were introduced as a way for the government to try to entice people to develop the arid interior years ago. The ACT and Canberra is also all government owed land so nobody actually owns land in Canberra. You can buy a house but not the land it sits on.

Did you notice the straight piece of the road out of the homestead, that is probably also the landing strip for the Royal Flying Doctor Service for emergency medical services if required.

I lived in a remote Aussie sawmill town in the 70's, nothing but trees for 50 miles in any direction. Population hovered around 25, in 12 houses, one sawmill, a dirt airstrip, and a public telephone box. Nearest town was a 3hr return trip, nearest traffic light was a 5hr return trip. Loved every minute of it.

I love how people say "Things are bigger in Texas" obviously knows anything about Australia. We have the biggest ranch, biggest rock, biggest reef, Biggest Spiders, biggest crabs (on Christmas Island) and longest fence. 😂 Adds largest weapons testing area. 🤣 And termite mounds. Sure I must have missed other things. The longest straight railroad line in the world across the Nullarbor Plain, thanks JamesDavy2009.

I had 50 acres once, down in Tasmania, near Hobart on on the slopes of Mt Wellington. It had a nice creek for water that sometimes raged due to snow melt. It was fabulous but I ended up having to sell it as my plans for moving jobs from Melbourne to Tassie didn't pan out and my partner who was there was too lonely. I really wish I still had it. I am in country Vic at the moment with a half acre and lovely surrounds but still might go to Tassie and get a bit more land. I don't want to be too close to people both for privacy and for noise levels. Both ways.

The level of UV and light in Australia is insane. 200 years ago when the first European settlers came their paintings of Australia did the light wrongly; they couldn't adjust from the lower levels in Europe.

If you like bragging stories, Kerry Packer at the casino is a good one. Story goes he was playing in a High roller area and this American guy was bragging on and on about how rich he was. So Kerry just turns to him and says I'll toss you for it!

Re road trips in au… they’re fun and everything, but another RU-vidr once pointed out that in America you can drive in any direction and you’ll end up in a big city…no so in Australia. That RU-vidr has a good new video that you’ll like, Ian. That Firebird guy the American living in Australia car guy.

Sick cap mate! Good onya! Also, I can confirm the 55 degrees. Ive been in 55 before. We were workin out in the yards with the cattle at that time. bloody hot. this was out in a small town of 60 people

My uncle has 3 cattle stations in WA I’ll have to ask how much land he owns all up. But I’m pretty sure the Queen is technically the largest land owner in the world

5:27 The first photo of William Creek is accurate. It's desert. It's flat. It's pretty sparse. Yes it absolutely has a hotel but not the modern-looking multistorey hotel pictured... it's what you'd expect - it's basic and the pub (ie. bar) is the main function of the hotel. The camping and cabins across the street are also basic. The golf course isn't dunes. Everything there is flat desert. I stayed the night in the campground in a swag (a thin mattress in a canvas bag that you add a sleeping bag into) directly on the ground looking up at the amazing stars and I've never felt further from everywhere than there. You can watch the sunset and sunrise without getting up because of how flat it is.

Fun fact; In Oz there was ,and possibly still, is an organisation called lone scouts for boys living isolation. they had an annual fund raiser called job week where scout did paid work and sent half to head office and kept the rest for their group. One lone scout raised over $500.00 and sent it in. when asked how he raised so much, he responded "collecting the mail for dad and the neigbours". Head office thought it was a ridiculous amount until they discovered that mail pick up run was a 4 hour round trip flight in his dads airplane. Out there kids can ride horses before they can walk and flt airplanes before they can legally drive a car.

A lot of inland Australia has never been up for actual sale, only for Lease Holding. Typical I believe are 99 years leases, with entitlement to extend over anyone else, so unlikely to change hands unless the current holder wants out. A lot of large properties have changed hands (lease holder) in the past 20+ years. One very large holder of several large NT leases is a British Lord, another is Gina Reinhart, who inherited major Iron mines in WA. Others that have taken some big properties lease and purchases included are some big Chinese holdings who also own some major water rights that are being strongly fought, as the Chinese operations are preventing significant natural river waterflow and holding other properties to ransom, offering to buy out others. Many of the big properties are so large, it is use of light aircraft making visits to neighbours or near towns, as driving can be days for trip turn around. Imagine telling your wife you expect to be back by tomorrow evening, from getting the mail from the mailbox, or back from saying hello to the neighbour in two days. Many original large properties for example Wavehill Station in NT have been broken apart to some extent and been returned to Native Title, returned to Aboriginal local tribe to manage. The big areas are definitely needed as number of stock is often many square miles per head of stock. Land shared by the stock, Kangaroos, EMUs, Camels and more.

My aunt owned a property in Queensland. She was the second gate from the little town (general store, newsagent and maybe 5 other businesses at the most). Her gate was 9 miles from town. She had 5000 acres. A great holiday place for us to visit when we were kids.

My dad came from cattle station.... 500acre paddock, very normal. But these guys have 1000acre plus paddocks, they are massive.

I saw a program that said Queen Elizabeth is the biggest land owner, but it's in different countries and not all in one place.

My son lives on a property 4 1/2 hours drive outside of Alice Springs. His mail fly's in once a week on a 1 1/2 hour flight from the Alice.

There is actually a bigger one in Western Australia that is a combined mining and cattle lease owned by Gina Rinehart. It’s not a pure cattle station like Anna Creek, but Rinehart owns about 1.2% of Australia through various mining and pastoral leases in Western Australia.

Cooper Pedy somehow always reminds me of the movie "The Hills Have Eyes".

I currently live on a small farm of only 2000 acres+ in south Australia and have worked on many of those stations. I loved going on working holidays interstate to stay on friends stations, smallest was over 200+ mile's square. The Williams are neighbours who actually live not far away from me. A lit heads up for many Australians just down the road can mean a few hrs and hundreds of miles lol.

That’s My family farm thanks for covering it, it is insanely huge and the up keep was almost impossible during covid trying to get workers in, we almost divided it to sell off but it’s back to normal again thank god

Every winter there is a three day concert held on a cattle station just outside of Birdsville in far west QLD. Adria Down's is the property and the concert, the Big Red Bash, is held on a dry lake bed, Lake Napanerika at the foot of the largest sand dune in Australia, Big Red, the eastern border of the Simpson desert. The homestead is 119 k's away from the eastern gate of the property.

Great video but the ive never heard soooo many place names butchered so badly hahaha

Haven’t been to this channel in a while. It’s definitely grown!

You should look deeper into kidmans history, it's quite fascinating

Kidman's is a quite a story, if you're interested. He started out small, & rough, in cattle that grew into a large herd very, very remote from his market. In those days the only means of transport to market was on foot, & the trek through such dry country lasting many months, what survived of the herd was just a worthless leather bag of bones with hoofs & horns still attached. So Kidman leased a series of way stations along his route where the herds could rest & regain condition before moving on to the next, & so on all the way to Adelaide where he presented them at the sale yards in the best possible condition. It made him fabulously wealthy, but he never lost the lessons of his frugal upbringing in that he never wasted anything. He was a hard man, in a hard country, at a time of hardship. One famous story was that he once fired a stockman for striking a match with which to light his cigarette instead of walking over to the camp fire for a light. Kidman was known as The Cattle King, & The Kidman Empire was broken up after his death.

My husband & I with some friends did a holiday in our 4x4s down the Strzlecki track, around the base of Lake Eyre (your guy didn’t say it right, it’s pronounced Lake Air) which actually had water in it at the time, a very rare occurrence. We went to Coober Pedy, Oodnadatta and William Creek which has a pretty awesome pub. It was rocking when we met up with our friends there. That area might be desolate,but it has a beauty all its own. I love your appreciation of all things Aussie. It’s about time you moved here oi!

Come to Australia iWrocker and fam! We’ll find you a property that’s not too big, not too small but just right!

My dad was a Jackeroo in the 1940's and drove cattle from the channel country down to south west Queensland to sell and rail to Brisbane.

There was several that basically adjoined properties controlled by one conglomerate, and was taught to us at school as being one property instead of one holding, the total holdings was just under the size of Texas. The total holdings at one stage by just one person/part of the conglomerate was around 3% of Oz at around 230,000sqkm. Currently the largest holder of land in Oz is Gina Reinhart with 92,000sqkm, but not in one property.

Ian have a look at cave diving on the Nullarbor Plain. It’s amazing.

Many years ago, don't think it was this guy, there was an older man that owned a massive chunk of rural Australia. He did it in an interesting way. When the husband died of a family the man would step in and help the widow wife and remaining family by helping with drilling water bore's and repairing anything on their properties that needed fixing free of charge, but he always had one request. If they ever thought to sell he requested that they come to him first. The family would get their land appraised and he would offer to buy them out by offering 3x their appraisal. All he had to do was sit and wait for the widow to pass away and then the kids to get tired of running the farm and come to him to sell. He did that for many years and the family acquired a massive property. I have no idea if it stands still today.

Pastoral leases have often been held by the same family for generations.

My great uncle used to own heaps of land in north Queensland it was swamp land but owned heaps of it. Same deal it was considered useless until he sold it to people that turned it into sugar cane farms.

As an Aussie , i know at one Station the letter box is 300 klm ( 186 miles ) away from the homestead , who going to check the Mail today !! Ahhaaaa

i did a stint as a jackaroo on an Angus beef farm when i was 20

Hi There! When considering large areas here in OZ there is the Bradshaw Field Training area used by Australian and US forces for training purposes. The US command love it as it is 870,000 hectares or about 3,400 square miles...about the size of Connecticut I believe...

I have met one of the owners of ACS and they are the most down to earth people you could ever meet.

you'll have to have a look at the Henley on Todd regatta. boat race on dry creek. they had to cancel it one year as there were rains and the river filled up.

I was on a property in Australia on one occasion. The Station Owner used to use his light aircraft to fly out over the water holes to observe if any stock was stuck in the water. I stayed in a drovers room/ A steel frame over 4 paint cans, very old mattress on top of the steel frame.

G'day mate, Sir Sidney Kidman when he was alive, was the largest landowner in the history of the world, and will most likely never be overtaken. He owned a system of interconnected cattle stations from North to South and believed that he could beat droughts in Australia by moving his cattle. He was wrong, it did not work.

I use to service many of these Stations for 2 years with the Road Trains bringing in supplies, like food, general goods fuel etc. From the main hwy to the main home stead, the biggest one I went to, was an 8 hour drive. Many of the home steads have many buildings, for the main residence to the workers or farm hands. The little shed like shown in this video, is normally like like satellite building scattered at certain location where they would muster the live stock for relocation, to sale yards, export and even for local use. Some home steads are like a very tiny village too, kids here go to school over the internet now, but before it was on HF and short wave 2 wave radio, It's an extreme and interesting to visit I recommend Daily Waters in Northern Territory, as it will cater for back packers and campers. Best time to visit this region is around June, July August, yes extreme weather between late October to early May

G'day Ian. I used to work for Sydney Kidman in 1984-85.; At the height of Syds'empire. He could travel from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Adelaide , without leaving his own land.

I work in lands administration departme in QLD. One location was out by 700km, but was still within the correct region. In a lot of places that would be in a different, state, provence or even contry. I was looking after an area bigger than Texas! There are a lot of large mostly uninhabited areas of land around Australia!

A lot of the (internal land) stations were bought around the 60-70s, for about $0.20 cents a hectare, and are now are worth millions

I came remember when Sydney television stations used to prove summer was here by frying an egg on the footpath, and that isn't tropical or desert.

Give me 1000 acres with a house in the middle to get away from all the crazies in this world and I'll be a happy man 😊😊

I've been to William Creek on a 2 week road trip, it is quite literally in the middle of nowhere, the pub roof is full of peoples ID. Also on that road trip we drove the equivalent of London, England to Athens, Greece... And back

Interesting. On my mum's side of the family we have 14 thousand acres, 3 dairys and run sheep and black angus beef, my uncle's inherited the lot & i help out where i can during hay season & working in one of the dairys. 👍🤠

I grew up on a 100 acre farm, and my brother has now increased that to about 450 acres. I now live on a small rural block which is just less than 1 acre and that suits me.

Hey mate Cant believe what I just seen. In your video at around 1:25 there is some very green grassy farms. I lived and grew up in the mountains just behind there on our family farm.. Mount Mitchell. Its in screen right there. Those other farms are our neighbours that I know really well.. Total classic. There area is Rose Valley Gerringong NSW. Where the mountains touch the sea. About one and a half hours south of Sydney.. lovely dairy farming country on the south coast.

that photograph that they say is Anna creek station...is actually a photo of William creek Hotel (you can see the waterbuffalo cage out back).

Friend of mine worked on a station. The ''home paddock' was 10miles X 10 miles.

Queen Elizabeth is the largest land owner in the world. 2nd place is King Abdullah who is obviously working for the queen. Still loving your videos!!

Just a heads up, from an Aussie, Lake Eyre is pronounced Lake “Air”, like as in air we breathe.

I've worked on 2 stations, pretty Plains and strathpark, that were both bigger than any ranch in Texas

It's huge in area but no one is out working all the land every day or anything like on a smaller ranch. Planes are used to find the herd etc. It's definitely worth going through there!

The largest state, Western Australia is roughly the size of Texas... and the country of Mexico combined

ths is what most of central Australia is like. I am from north east SA and its sheep stations mostly. its always funny hearing americans talk about how gig things are in texas and their "Ranches

0:40 OMG 😆

Hate to mow the yard.

I absolutely LOVE my outback trips, done about 5 so far... every trip is 4 to 5 weeks long and over 8000km on the clock... It is sparse landscape but never boring.. it changes every year, after some rain it's green! Thunderstorms at Uluru are a sight to be seen to be believed, and a few days later it blooms... I could not go for the last 2 years (covid) but I am gearing up for the next one.. the "towns" are great fun.. 3 buildings - a pub (of course), a shop, a service station and campground.. "next town 350km" :-) I am a city person from Vienna and I take european students with me, driving 6 to 8 hours per day is nothing.. super cool to do

At the height of his land ownership Sir Sydney Kidman who was once the owner of Anna Creek Station which was only one of his holdings actually owned more land than the entirety of Texas

This property was owned by Sir Sidney Kidman. He married a cousin of mine. This was not his only property he once owned / controlled more land than the British Monarchy. He drove cattle from as far away as his Queensland cattle stations down a track now named Kidman Way to market in Adelaide. He was known as the Cattle King but he was very humble man preferring to sleep on a hard surface and be frugal. Although there’s biographies about Nicole Kidman bring a relative she wasn’t as far as my research found unless it was generations ago back in England.

57 deg C on the mine site I worked at in the shade of a shipping container and ground temp of 63 deg C

Great hat mate, love it, looks good on you.

If you are interested the story of Sidney Kidman it is festinating, he left home at 10 or 12 years old penniless, and ended up owning a string of stations from North Queensland to South Australia all on the main rivers Mostly

Have done work at Anne creek, helped mustering years ago, beautiful station

My nephew works on one of these stations, it has 70,000 breeding head of cattle and each year they breed 2000 bulls to service those cows. They have a herd of 500 horses used by the cowboys and his string is 7, one for every day of the week, when they do a round-up they can be at cattle camp for weeks. It takes a day to drive to the nearest town for supplies, Tennant Creek, and that place is so wild the aboriginals just get drunk, steal everything and riot every night. When the station buys supplies they send armed cowboys to defend the truck as its loaded up, they never allow the women on the station to go to town as they are not safe in town. I visited him last year and drove dow from Darwin in a hire 4WD. I had to get diesel in Tennant Creek and when I was their aboriginal youth were running a muck in town, randomly stealing stuff from the gas station and the owner warned me not to go into town alone. What a place, I saw the news the other day and they government has banned alcohol and introduced curfews.

Road tripping in Australia is substantially more expensive than it ever was because there's basically no more beater cars for backpackers to buy. In the 90's and early 2000's there was surplus of cheap Falcons and Commodore's which would more than likely do the trick. My 1994 EF Fairmont has been from the NT to QLD multiple times, our homegrown cars were built to drive this place. Now, because of Covid the price of cars has skyrocketed and the traditional backpacker cars are increasing in value. The AU Falcon is a prime example, especially the wagon.

The biggest station used to be in the Northern Territory of Australia. It was larger than Belgium. It was finally broken up into a couple of smaller farms.

I spent a year driving around Australia in a 1979 Chrysler valiant, cost me £300 in 2001 Best time of my life 😃👍

Australia also has the two biggest cities in the world: Kalgoorlie Boulder and Mt Isa. Both cover an area over 43,000 sq kms. Mt Isa also has the longest city road in the world - 189 kms.

A few years ago I worked on the Tipperary group of stations . 13000 square kilometers with between 80 and 120 workers depending on the season it was owned by a lawyer named Myres it ran six small choppers and had a tarmac runway that could land a Hercules air plane