The Big Run

It occurs to me that I have a few readers of inferior non-Australian heritage. These people may have some difficulty comprehending the sheer scale of things here in the Wide Brown Land. I feel that it is incumbent on me to bring some light into their otherwise dull, worthless lives. I have decided to do this by telling you a little bit about a little hobby farm in the Northern Territory; it's called Victoria River Downs, the VRD, or The Big Run.
It was originally stocked in the 1880s by two men, Maurice Lyons and Charles Brown Fisher. Not content with being named after a future comic-strip icon, Fisher also managed to be the son of one of the only two men in history* with the name of Hurtle. I bet he got picked on at school.
Most of the original stock was brought in by outback legend Nat Buchanan. 20,000 furry methane factories. At least you'd never go short of a feed. (As an aside, most of these blokes lived exclusively on salt beef, black tea and damper made from a 50% mixture of weevils and flour. Would have been hard work laying a cable).
By the late 1890's - early 1900's, the Big Run was in it's prime - around 21,000 square kilometres(or 5,250,000 acres) and 30,000 cattle. It was also associated with some famous names - Sid (The Godfather of the Australian Beef Industry) Kidman was part of a consortium which bought the place in 1900. John (Andrew McFarlane was so not a Flying Doctor) Flynn was stranded for a month on a sandbar in the Victoria River. And - for the Poms - the place was sold in 1909 to the Bovril Company. I've never met anybody who actually drinks Bovril. Apart from a Billy Connolly sketch, I've never heard of anybody drinking Bovril. I'd give it a go, but it's probably crap.
Since then it's been bought and sold a few times and had it's share of ups and downs, including a malaria outbreak which killed about 10% of the population. These days it is owned by Heytesbury Beef, which is a Holmes a'Court company. It's only a shadow of its former self at 3,000,000 acres and 24,000 cattle, but I don't think they're doing it too tough - Heytesbury beef produced over 9,000 tons of beef in 2002, from a herd of 200,000+ cattle running on 8,300,000 acres. Poor buggers, wonder where their next feed's coming from?
*That I know about