King Ranch (Tully River Station) was a major cattle fattening ranch established in 1963 in the
Wet Tropics of Queensland
The Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Site consists of approximately 8,940 km2 of Australian wet tropical forests growing along the north-east Queensland portion of the Great Dividing Range. The Wet Tropics of Queensland meets all f ...
. It was developed by
Bob Kleberg, a descendant of the King family of
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
, USA. Kleberg was offered a lease by the Queensland Government on of land, which at the time was largely covered in lowland
tropical rainforest
Tropical rainforests are rainforests that occur in areas of tropical rainforest climate in which there is no dry season – all months have an average precipitation of at least 60 mm – and may also be referred to as ''lowland equa ...
. It is sited on the traditional lands of the
Dyirbal people
The Dyirbal, also called Jirrbal, are an Aboriginal Australian people living in northern Queensland, both one tribe (the ''Dyirbalŋan'' or 'Tully River blacks') and a group of related contiguous peoples included under that label as the Dyirbal t ...
. The land was made available to Kleberg by the government for A$5 per acre for forest and A$2 per acre for open field with the pre-development conditions that the land be cleared, seeded to pasture, and necessary infrastructure established within 5 years of the project's commencement. It was agreed that the land would be appraised by government experts within 5 years of completion of the work and if deemed to have been raised to optimum production levels King Ranch would buy the land as
freehold
Freehold may refer to:
In real estate
*Freehold (law), the tenure of property in fee simple
* Customary freehold, a form of feudal tenure of land in England
* Parson's freehold, where a Church of England rector or vicar of holds title to benefice ...
at the price stipulated for its former undeveloped condition. All timber from the clearing operations were initially reserved for use and sale by the Queensland Government although it is doubtful whether this condition was fulfilled and it is likely that most of the cleared timber was burnt on location.
[
][QPD, 1st session 37th Parliament 1963, speech by A.R. Fletcher, Minister for Lands, 13 October 1963, p.1147;][T.D. Bulletin, editorials, 28 October 1963, 16 January 1964]
The arrangement between the Queensland Government and Kleberg initiated a major project to systematically clear the area of every tree and boulder upon the property with dynamite and bulldozers whilst filling in swamps to ensure that freehold conditions could be met within the 5-year period. After this livestock numbers increased from nil to almost 30,000 within around 10 years leading to King Ranch becoming the then-largest tropical cattle property in Australia. The Ranch's Australian operations were divided up and sold off for considerable capital gain in the late 1980s after the death of Kleberg with the area largely being converted to banana and cane farms.
References
{{coord missing, Queensland
Stations (Australian agriculture)
Pastoral leases in Queensland