Article by Warren Brown, courtesy of the Herald Sun.
20.08.2025
The cold, wet, blustery weather had well and truly settled on Jindabyne Station where the bleak conditions were more in keeping with the farm’s alpine namesake in the Snowy Mountains than a 7000ha cattle station just shy of the Queensland border.
It’s high-rainfall country here, which when combined with the region’s renowned fertile, black soil, makes the property ideal for its task in producing premium-quality wagyu beef.
Jindabyne Station manager Chris Thomas is delighted with the rain, but it turns the nutrient-rich soil into something of an instant quagmire.
“It’s the best thing for growing,” he says of the molasses-thick mud, “but it’s pretty hard to get around when it’s wet.”
A local from nearby Bingara, Thomas retained his three-year position as Jindabyne’s Station manager when the property was sold last December to Gina Rinehart’s subsidiary cattle operation S. Kidman & Co – the first time the 126-year-old company has bought property for more than 20 years.
S.Kidman & Co is inextricably linked to Australian agriculture. Adelaide-born entrepreneur, philanthropist, pastoralist and cattleman Sir Sidney Kidman (1857-1935) rose from humble beginnings as a bullock driver to become renowned throughout Australia as “The Cattle King”, at one stage owning 280,000sq m of land.
Kidman’s magnetic personality earned him a legion of loyal employees where working for him was described “as a sort of badge of pride” and in 2025 the sentiment still continues.
“I’ve never worked for a company before,” Mr Thomas said about his role with the property’s new owner.
“But they took a punt on me. The Kidman company is used to raising cattle in the Channel Country, but here where there’s higher rainfall it’s quite different and they backed me in 110 per cent.
The two businesses were careful not to be in competition with each other, he said.
With the weather still inclement, the property’s three young farm hands are spending the day inside the machinery shed with an oxygen-acetylene welder doing running repairs on a monstrous, oversized plough.
All aged in their 20s, Adam Stevens, Jamie Doney and Dean Jones have been employed on Jindabyne since its recent acquisition. Two are locals and Dean moved from Grafton on the coast, where he had been working in the beef and timber industry and is now one of the team on Jindabyne.
Each one at different times a roustabout, a bush mechanic, a plumber, a builder, a fitter and turner – tough young blokes with a keen sense of humour about of life in the outback.
“I don’t mind the snakes, it’s the spiders I hate,” 29 year-old Adam tells me with his tongue firmly in cheek. “I mean you can feel when a snake runs up your trouser leg … but a spider!”
