The Single Australian Farm That’s Bigger Than 49 Countries

Video written by Adam Chase

[MsJubjubbird]

I went to school with a girl who lived on a sheep station that was many times larger than some European countries. Prior to boarding in the city, she was picked up in the morning and dropped off in the afternoon at her front gate by the school bus from the nearest town. However, the front gate was about 10 km from the homestead. So, as soon as she was tall enough to reach the pedals, she was taught to drive herself to the front gate in one of the station's cars and then drive herself home. Perfectly legal as she was on private property.

[BiggestPLANTS]

This quickly got off track from talking about Anna Creek Station, and instead about the entire giant-Australian-cattle-farm business, and I loved every second of it

[conorcrowley]

The size of these Australian Cattle stations meant that they were one of the early precursors to zoom classes back in the day, using a single teacher with radios communicating with them.

[Learn_Something_New]

In terms of crazy high figures for land ownership, the Roman Catholic Church is up there. The commonly agreed upon estimate is around 716, 000 square kilometers (~276, 000 square miles) of land around the world, including land in very expensive places like NYC. So while Vatican City is technically the world's smallest country, they own a lot more land abroad

[jotdog]

Fun fact, Lake Eyre is pronounced like "air" rather than "ire". Don't know if the colonist's name was pronounced that way but it's what we've run with 😅 Also has an Indigenous name as part of the official name, Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre.

[elygolden]

I think the reason the press uses Israel is because, even excluding disputed territory, it is the largest country not larger than the ranch that they can be reasonably sure that their readers to have heard of

[thestig]

Never did I think that a cafe in the Sydney suburb in which I grew up in, Wahroonga, would somehow end up in a HAI video. This channel continues to amaze (and baffle).

[MarieInnes]

My great-grandfather was a stockman for Sir Sidney Kidman at Longreach cattle up in Queensland and is in the Australian Stockmans Hall Of Fame.

[adrielsebastian]

Real HAI fans will remember that he mentioned this in passing in another HAI episode 👀

Edit: it's the dingo fence episode

[jakenum]

As someone that's recently driven the Oodnadatta track and driven through William creek and Anna creek station, words do not do justice to the absolute vast emptiness of the land up there

[dataisbrilliant]

“How does a farm the size of 147 Liechtensteins manage to operate?

That’s a very good question, I think the aliens are helping them.

[welshduckman]

As a member of the giant Austrailian Cattle Station busisness, this was very accurate, thank you!

[bartholomewdan]

I like how you can tell the animators got bored of drawing Wales about 5 minutes in.

[bababababababa]

Bigger than 49 countries but probably with a smaller population than an apartment block in China




Edit: damn wait 11 people? More like a single floor of an apartment block in China… or literally any apartment block ever

[philip]

Kidman, who created the largest cattle station started at 15 with nothing.
He gradually built his holdings with a brilliant concept in mind.
If the station was large enough in the north south direction, no matter what time of the year there would be water somewhere on the property. It worked.

[five-toedslothbear]

That S. Kidman logo you used has an amazing coincidence. In telegraphy, SK with an overbar would mean it's the SK prosign, transmitted in Morse Code like an S and a K run together. It means "End of Contact/End of Work" It's also commonly used in Amateur Radio circles to mean "Silent Key", indicating an operator whose "key" will never be heard again, because they're deceased, as Sir Sidney Kidman is. Their website uses a different logo, probably because some smart aleck like me pointed that out.

[samstudios]

As an Australian I must fulfil my constitutional duty and explain the ‘oo’ in Wahroonga is pronounced as a short vowel sound (like you’re saying on and in at the same time). In any case, if you are passing Wahroonga I recommend the butchers block just down the road instead!

[jakereynolds]

Something that really weirded me out was when you said that the temperature regularly hits 55c on a cattle farm … that’s the temperature that we will cook a joint of beef at the restaurant I work at so it’s a nice rosy rare-medium rare, so I can only assume that these cows are walking around basically precooked

[adithyamenon]

Remember this from the Top Gear Episode. The numbers thrown at me back then boggled my mind. Still does. That and the fact that they use helicopters to herd their thousands of cattle.

[mathewblanc]

"Overlooking the fact that Indigenous people had managed to live off that land for c̶e̶n̶t̶u̶r̶i̶e̶s̶ millennia" FTFY

Also, it seems that your average MPV (mispronunciation per video) goes way up with Australian content, might be worth getting an Australian in to run through the script with you whenever you're talking about us (happy to provide that help if you don't know any Australians).