Kerry Packer by Michael Stahl (i read books .txt) 📕

‘They would fly you in and then bus you … We went into this amazing property. They had a big cinema, with black leather couches all tiered-up, and they’d often have Hollywood premiere movies up there, long before they got to the cinemas. Tennis courts, swimming pools, the Greg Norman-designed golf course …’

Packer, it seems, always had an outback-sized streak of the bush in him. The no-bullshit, foul-mouthed, often prickly personality that seemed so at odds with the billionaire businessman lifestyle, was absolutely at home in the hardworking environment of the Australian outback.

Out there, they’ll respect the type of bloke who pulls a Brahman out of a dam—not the one who parks a Rolls-Royce in a swimming pool.

After Packer’s suspected heart attack in 1983, the man he enlisted to start scouting for bush property was Ken Warriner. The two men went back to the mid-1970s, when Warriner had been manager of Mount House Station in the Kimberley, in remote, far north-western Australia. Packer would trek up there to blow off some city steam.

‘I was amazed 30 years ago at the hair-raising manner in which he would involve himself in catching wild bulls, chasing crocodiles, and donkey-shooting on foot,’ Warriner told The Bulletin after Packer’s death in 2005. ‘KP was a very fit man.’

The outback provided Packer with an escape, not only in the physical environment, but perhaps also one of few where he could just be ‘one of the boys’. And he took to it with typical Packer panache.

When Packer’s bush push began in 1983, Warriner’s suggestion had been to offer him Humbert River, a 1000 square kilometre station just south of Kakadu National Park, in the Northern Territory. It was one of two properties owned since 1979 by a partnership of experienced manager Warriner and prominent cattlemen Peter Baillieu and Tony Chisholm. Their other property was the much larger (10,500 square kilometres), but still somewhat run-down Newcastle Waters station, farther south.

Packer, in short order, convinced the trio to sell both properties. He installed Warriner as managing director with a 10 per cent holding in the company (Ashburton Pastoral Co) that would later become Consolidated Pastoral Company.

Packer’s outback ambitions gained a huge nudge the following year, when he made a bid for the gem in Australia’s northern cattle country, the 8900 square kilometre Victoria River Downs, which sits to the west of Newcastle Waters. A deal was contractually done, but at the 11th hour, the Northern Territory Government vetoed the sale.

Packer turned his attentions back to Newcastle Waters, and beyond. From his knowledge of the country, and from expert input from the likes of Warriner and fabled, fellow outback grazier and polo champion Sinclair Hill, Packer was developing a much broader vision for cattle farming.

The previous partnership had bought Newcastle Waters in a run-down state, and was in the throes of building it up to compete with VRD. Packer effectively gave free rein to Warriner’s management skills, backing him in a multi-million dollar spend on new fencing, equipment and dozens of new artesian bores (guess who named the Benaud and Bradman Bores?) Packer also built himself a grand, eight-bedroom homestead.

Warriner’s signature strategy was to establish a network of top-class cattle breeding, holding and fattening facilities across the Top End, taking advantage of the best locations for each phase of the cattle production life cycle. Warriner restocked Newcastle Downs with Brahman heifers and breeders from Queensland, before buying a Brahman stud there. A similar Queensland stud was established for pure-bred Charolais bulls; these were crossed with pure-bred Brahmans to produce the hardy, yet high-quality hybrid Charbray.

On one exploratory tour of a potential property purchase, Packer and Warriner were lucky to not become mince-meat themselves, when both escaped the crash of a light aircraft. Details of the story are closely held, but it’s believed that the two were aboard a station owner’s Cessna, attempting to take off for an aerial tour of the property. The aircraft failed to clear a stand of trees at the end of the runway, tearing off a part of the wing and crashing to the ground.

Packer, although soaked in fuel, was mainly concerned with commandeering a nearby helicopter so as to complete the mission. Presumably, this was one time he didn’t automatically reach for a cigarette …

Strategic purchases like holding and fattening properties in Queensland’s channel country and abattoirs in the Northern Territory built CPC into a monstrous, multi-national meat-making machine. The Australian station holdings of 5.8 million hectares in Queensland, the NT and Western Australia equated to 85 per cent of the land area of Tasmania.

‘KP was particularly interested in breeding cattle that could handle the environment,’ Warriner told The Bulletin. ‘Everything had to be done to perfection. He was driven by the group’s overall bottom line, rather than by quick profits. He invested in excess of $100 million in the pastoral industry at a time when far better investments were being put to him.

‘But he loved the harshness and challenge of the north, and the sort of people who work this area. He had a great rapport with all and sundry—from truck drivers to head stockmen and meat workers—a genuine respect for them and those that pioneered this country before them.’

Warriner suggested that Packer’s intervention and his drive for perfection may have been instrumental in the Australian cattle industry’s survival on the international market. ‘[Packer] realised that improved processing was essential, not only for his own properties, but for a cattle industry generally that at the time was in dire straits. He genuinely wanted the whole industry to survive and prosper.’

Strangely, despite Packer’s early enthusiasm for the outback and a continuing close eye on the CPC balance sheet, it’s been reported that he ultimately stayed in his Newcastle Waters homestead on only a couple of occasions. According to Paul Myers in The Australian (‘End of an era as Packer quits bush’, 3 January 2009),