Wben historians even­tually sit down to compile their list of greats for the 20th century, the name of Texas cattle baron Robert Justus Kleberg Jr. undoubt­edly will be among them.

As reigning head of the family kingdom of King Ranch Incorporated. Kle­berg, 73, has founded a beef industry across four conti­nents on more than 11,500,000 acres of land.

He is fulfilling his role as the world's biggest pastoral landlord on a level un­thought of 20 years ago.

His cattle graze across the United States (970,000 acres) , South America (513,000 acres), Africa (7000 acres), and his biggest in­vestment in future beef, Australia- 9,754,000 acres.

And in addition, King Ranch is negotiating for a further 1,300,000 acres in the Kimberley mountains in the northern uplands of Western Australia.

The King Ranch lands run right through the hot cli­mates where much of the human race lives on the brink of famine. Sturdy San­ta Gertrudis stock bred by Kleberg's own hand defy the shimmering heat and hold new hopes for unborn mil­lions in these lands.

It is a heritage which was spawned on the advice hand­ed down more than a cen­tury ago in America by the famous Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee to kingdom founder Captain Richard King:-" Buy land, and never sell." Admittedly the advice

took time to seed. From 1853 when Captain King acquired the big white villa along the Santa Gertrudis Creek in south Texas - still the com­pany's headquarters- until the early years of Robert Kleberg J r _, grandson of the pioneering Captain, the Kle­bergs were content to stay within their fences.

The holding was big -90,000 head on 1,200,000 acres - but it was only a paddock compared with the empire Kleberg was to

amass. As a pastoral spe­cialist Kleberg has few peers, and is certainly the most professional in the fields of range grasses, horse and cattle genetics and cattle pharmacopoeia, outside universities and gov­ernment bureaus.

Applying this knowledge and his genius for breeding, Kleberg set about his monu­mental quest for land, those vast wet tropical tracts across the earth where a thriving beef industry is in the making.

But for his Santa Ger­trudis breed Kleberg prob­ably would never have left the United States. It linked the best qualities of the Brahman - resistance to heat, insects and disease -with the wonderful beef -producing characteristics of the deep-thighed, broad­backed Shorthorn.

The Santa Gertrudis was certified as an authentic new breed by the American Department of Agriculture in 1940, and gave Kleberg the key to the tropics, pre­viously too wet, too dry, or too hot to support the finest European beef cattle bred for good grass and temper­ate climates. t • • ~ • J • • •

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Today the descendants of Monkey, the cherry-red bull and founding sire of his breed, stand as sturdy testi­mony to the leadership of the Running W brand of King Ranch.

Fate favoured Kleberg in his empire-building. Oil in commercial quantities was discovered beneath his Texas lands in 1945, and to­gether with enormous re­serves of natural gas, have helped underwrite his ven­tures. From $15 million to $18 million a year has been flowing into his funds re­cently.

It would have been easy to sit back and grow rich from oil, or to plough the millions into less vulneraple in­vestments than cattle

8 The Sunday Mail Color Magazine, October 12, 1969

abroad. But the black gold was risked and is helping to burn the Running W into tens of thousands of cattle across the world.

But before the fusing of hot iron and beef flesh, came his quest for land. It began in the early 1950s and the three areas chosen to put his cattle to the test were. Australia, Cuba and BraziL

The Australian venture, because of its enormity and accelerated development has overshadowed all other operations. Kleberg saw the flat, treeless range and was reminded of home. Land was cheap (where it was to be had), and cattlemen were finding it hard with the Brit­ish breeds.

Before his land, Kleberg chose his men - William Sydney Robinson (who died in 1963), Sir Rupert Clarke (great grandson of a pio­neering pastoralist in Tas­mania) , Peter Baillieu (W. S. Robinson's grandson), and Sir Sam Hordern, then

Kleberg .. King Ranch add up to nearly 1 0

• . Runl millio1

of cattle land across our

51 (member of a long estab­lished land family with large holdings in Queensland and _the Northern Territory).

They were the aristocrats of the country's pastoralists - men Australians would know, and through whom they would come to know King Ranch and what it stood for. Kleberg asked

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them for near total com­mitment, to retire from any­thing that might keep them from giving enough time to his plans. A tall order, but it was all right with them.

A corporation was set up, King Ranch (Australia) Pty. Ltd. with Robinson as a di­rector, and its primary func­tion to manage the stud herd. The Australians took minority equity positions, along with an option that as­sured them an aggregate 30 per cent share ip the enter­prise (if they wanted it).

Sir Rupert is corporation chairman today and the company has been made se­nior holding group for all Australian operations. Capi­tal outlays so far are ac­knowledged to be about $15 million.

Sir Samuel Hordern died in a car smash nine years ago, and the young Baillieu (now in his late 30's) is acti­vely directing stud oper­ations and shares with Sir Rupert the management of commercial stations in which the Australian part­ners are involved with King Ranch.

Kleberg' s first Australian buy was the 7500-acre Ris­don cattle station near War­wick. Looking north he saw the brigalow and gidyea scrub plains near Clermont. He selected two flat areas to start a commercial oper­ation with International Packers Ltd. (which merg­ed in March with Deltec Panamerica S.A., to form Deltec International Ltd. )

Two properties, Elgin Downs and New Twin Hill! were available on Ion~ leaseholds from the Queens· land Government which gave Kleberg a further as­surance that huge tracts of adjacent land would be available at modest rates it he and I.P.L. wanted to ex­pand.

King Ranch and l.P.L. (now Deltec) formed a sub­sidiary, Associated Stations Pty. Ltd., to lease the land and raise and fatten com­mercial steers. Now with surrounding land taken on lease, Associated's holdings in the Clermont area cover 1060 square miles (679,000 acres) most of which has been cleared.

Having a firm operational base Kleberg then moved to introduce his Santa Ger­trudis stock into the coun-~ try. But fearful pastoralists started a foot-and-mouth disease scare which led to demands that the animals be j slaughtered.

Road trains moving cattle from the King Ranch property, Brunette Downs, Northern Territory.

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Kleberg reacted boldly. His "prestige" Australian partners sought and got the severest tests which cleared the stock. Later at Risdon 10 of the young .bulls went un­der the auctioneer's ham­mer for an average nod of $2595 a head, believed to have been a record for any breed.

--~:·_,·.,, w··~ "'J'L''.- •._.... . . .a.:\·· .... · . . . . . . ... .. In 1956 a ban was placed

on the import of ALL cattle following an outbreak of bluetongue in America and Britain. Bluetongue hits sheep - Australia's No. 1 animal, and cattle can be carriers. Kleberg's con­fident entrance earlier brought him in on the ground floor. By ban time his stud herds at Risdon and Elgin Downs were going strong.

So successful was their impact that King found themselves bidding for their own animals at market. (Under land leasing ar­rangements with the State, Elgin Downs was obliged to sell at least 200 of its crossbred bulls to other breeders each year, and King wanted good breeding stock for their commercial herds.)

The sceptics yielded to reality. An 11-month-old Santa Gertrudis was giving 100 lb. more beef than any other steer the same age. It was tougher, less suscep­tible to ticks and soaked up the b3:king sun.

What was needed now was land, and more land. Kle­berg had long squinted over the flat, barren tracts of the Northern Territory and Queensland where the land was so poor that a cow and a calf needed 60 acres to sur­vive.

In 1958 he flew into the outback and a choking drought. In the dancing heat over Brunette Downs he saw 12,000 head drawn despai­ringly around a shallow lake. He also saw a tall seed like grain. It was Mitchell

grass, standing like hay in the searing heat.

Kleberg took over the Downs the same year from a drought-weary family. Some 30,000 cattle died in the first year of the dry, and the re­maining 30,000 were headed the same way when the rains came.

The 3-million acre proper­ty passed to King Rancn and its Australian partners on lease from the State at an annual rental of $1.12 a square mile. The Australian owners received $2 million for the wrap-up deal.

Water remained the key to the operation. A total of 120 wells (costing $12,000 each) were sunk to depths of 600 ft. After that no animal was more than seven miles from a drink. Catchment basins were dug, evaporation re­duced and pastures resh­aped. More than $2 million was spent on new fencing, water, roads and paddocks.

Two years after Santa Gertrudis stock bulls were turned out, the number of calves carried past weaning to branding increased by 50 per cent, and once again there is the awesome spec­tacle of 50,000 head on the Downs.

This was the beachhead Kleberg needed. In the next six years his empire swelled across three more huge tracts on the arid Barkly Ta­blelands - Barkly Downs (2,100,000 acres), Lake Nash (nearly 3 million acres), and Georgina Downs (800,000 acres).

Together with Brunette Downs these four major op­erations on the Queensland­Northern Territory table­lands total 8,900,000 acres and carry 130,000 cattle.

If the corporation was sen­timental about Risdon, their first station, they showed little signs of it when the op­portunity arose to switch stud headquarters. Risdon had suffered heavily from the drought, and the stud herd had been taken to surer locations five times in eight years.

In 1960 Kleberg was of-

Land clearing being carried out by King Ranch at Tully River Station, North Queensland.

fered the 1500-acre Milton Park, at Bowral, 80 miles south of Sydney. Owned by Anthony Hordern (Sam's uncle) , the estate boasted a 38in. average annual rain­fall . Kleberg paid $400,000 for it, and soon after added another 1500 acres from the adjoining Retford Park, of­fered by Hordern's widow.

Risdon was sold, and the foundation herd trucked south to what is today the fi­nest stud operation centre in Australia.

Still questing, Kleberg p i c k e d u p t w o c o m­plementary properties in 1962 - Deltroit (6000 acres) on the Victorian-N.S.W. bor­der and Bugilbone (15,000 acres) at Burren Junction in N.S.W. Both facilitate stud operations.

The stud farms are em­ploying artificial in-

semination on a scale new to Australia. The programme already produces a consid­erable fraction of the Santa Gertrudis stock bred here. Supplies are being stock­piled too as insurance against herd decimation. (The cattle import ban ex­tends to frozen semen as well).

. - .;,,

w But perhaps the real mea­

sure of this Australian oper­ation has been the duel be­tween Kleberg men and the steaming tropical rain for­ests where the coastal ranges tumble into the ocean near Tully in North Queensland.

The rainfall statistics -168in. average a year, and up to 310in. -were too good

AUSTRALIA 9,754,000

U.S.A. 970,000 " -

Kleberg world holdings, in acres.

for the conquering Texan to pass up. Nobody had thought of the land as beef country until he did in 1962.

He passed the real chal­lenge over to an Oklahoman, Lowell Wilkinson, King's land-clea rer, who spent three months exploring the area in a Land Rover. He came out with this solu­tion: -

The forest could be made into good cattle country, but the economics would be favourable only if the proj­ect were big enough to jus­tify bullocking through the tangle with the most pow­erful earth-moving machin­ery in existence.

His estimate meant work­ing a 50,000-acre tract at least. He calculated the land could be cleared and pas­tures sown for a total capital outlay of $750,000 (equal to about $20 an acre for land actually cleared ). Seeding, fencing, roads and housing would probably raise the to­tal plant cost to between $30 and $40 an acre.

In return he saw 15,000 head, about one animal to three acres, carried by the rich grass. Kleberg had a look for himself, agreed with the plant outlays, but doubled the carrying capa­city estimate to 30,000 head.

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the Government approached and askea to approve a fair price in advance of land de­velopment. King would then lease an adequate acreage, prepare the land and raise it to optimum production. Government experts would return five or 10 years later to appraise the operation. If they approved King would buy the land as a freehold, at the stipulated price for the land in its former undeve­loped condition.

The Governme nt ap­proved, and a price of about $5 an acre fixed on forest

land, and $2 an acre for open fields. The State also went one further and reserved the felled timber for itself. There was the traditional radical " Yank sellout" cry, but it fell on futuristic ears.

A Herculean effort was mounted and it was needed. It took five years to clear the Tully River rain forest. Wilkinson recalls the priva­tions of "charging alligators ( crocs to us ), and snakes, suffocating flies," and the general assault of "any ani­mal that is able to sting, bite, hiss, spit, harass, and otherwise abuse you."

Today up to 15,000 head of cattle are being primed on pasture where the grass stands so tall as to hide their presence. The first grasses and legumes were a mixture of strains gathered in Af­rica, New Guinea, Brazil, some developed by State re­search centres and others brought in by King.

Tully is still being proven, but indications are that it could be the most successful beef carrier ever prepared in this country. Animals there now were brought east from the dry outback, and their rate-of-gain has been tremendous.

Pasture evaluation by the Primary Industries Depart­ment revealed an average lightweight gain for small mobs of 430 lb. per beast a year. .

Kleberg's optimism envis­ages one animal to an acre and a half. Reckoning on that, Tully River lands should carry 30 ,000 head. The forecasts anticipate a slaughter turnoff of 25,000 head a year by 1972, a clear win to Kleberg.

If there were any horizons to the Kleberg kingdom, they haven' t come into view yet. He has reached from desert to tropical forest to put as much of his beef as he can on this earth.

The sheer magnitude of his operation apparently knows no horizons. ~

The Sunday Mail Color Magazine, October 12, 1969 9

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