The stockman who built an Australian cattle empire

Steeped in Australian farming history, Sir Sidney Kidman's Anna Creek Station is part of the biggest private landholding in the world. The homestead and front yard is pictured here in 1896

Two Chinese conglomerates were the last standing in a bidding war to buy an extraordinarily large slice of Australia and its pastoral history in November.

The Kidman cattle empire is Australia's largest landholding, encompassing some of the driest and toughest country Australia has to offer.

Its story begins in the 1890s with Sir Sidney Kidman and his elder brother Sackville, who embarked on an ambitious venture that would transform agriculture in Australia.

The two brothers wanted to grow livestock in the country's dry centre, supported by Queensland's channel country rivers - the Georgina, the Diamantina and Cooper Creek.

The plan was that tropical rain from the north would deliver water needed for farming to flourish in this harsh environment.

Kidman properties spread across three states and the Northern Territory

The Kidmans' ambition, wrote biographer Jill Bowman, was to establish "a chain of stations that were almost drought-proof, places that when linked together would provide a substantial water supply".

Sackville Kidman died in 1899, but Sidney turned their dream into reality, founding the company S. Kidman & Co the same year.

Today the business encompasses 19 properties across the Northern Territory, South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia.

It owns 101,411 sq km (39,155 sq miles) of land in total - that's more than 1% of Australia's land mass and larger than Ireland. One of its properties is Anna Creek, the world's biggest cattle station, which stretches across 23,677 sq km.

The Kidman family has owned and managed the business for 116 years. But in April this year it was put on sale for a projected sum of A$325m ($232m; £152.3m).