Anna Creek Station: The Giant Outback Cattle Run of South Australia

What is Anna Creek Station?

Anna Creek Station is a pastoral lease in the arid north of South Australia, and by area it is the largest working cattle station in the world. The Wikipedia entry on the station puts it at 23,876 square kilometres, about 5.9 million acres, which is more than seven times the size of Texas's King Ranch at 3,340 square kilometres. The Guinness World Records page for the largest cattle station is the usual reference for the title.

The station sits on the traditional lands of the Arabana people. Its nearest township is William Creek, and Coober Pedy is the nearest freight town. The main homestead is at Anna Creek, with an outstation at The Peake. Annual rainfall is cited at about 140 millimetres, which explains both the size and the low stocking rates.

How did Anna Creek get its name and start?

Explorer Peter Warburton named the creek in 1858 after a daughter of the pastoralist John Chambers. In January 1863 Julius Jeffreys, John Warren and William Bakewell bought the lease from the colonial government and set up a homestead at Strangways Springs.

The first plan was sheep. The owners stocked 7,300 of them, but drought struck from 1864 to 1866 and dingo attacks were a constant problem, so the partners switched to cattle. In 1872 the station was moved to its present site. Those two decisions, changing species and moving to better ground, shaped everything that followed.

From pastoral partners to the Kidman chain

Management passed through several hands over the next decades. John Hogarth's younger brother Thomas took over from John in 1893, George Warren managed for a year in 1913, and Francis Warren followed. In 1918 Malcolm Reid and Leslie Taylor bought the lease.

In 1935 Kidman Holdings bought Anna Creek and made it the headquarters of its pastoral block in the region. The Kidman group had already acquired The Peake in 1902 and Stuart Creek in 1919, so Anna Creek became the centre of a linked chain of dry-country runs. Until 2016 the McLean and Nunn families managed the properties in partnership.

What cattle run on Anna Creek?

The station runs Santa Gertrudis cattle, a breed chosen for hot, dry conditions. Carrying capacity is reported at up to 16,500 head in a good season, but the actual herd moves dramatically with the weather. The Wikipedia table lists about 16,000 head in 2002, around 4,000 in 2006, about 1,500 in 2008, 17,000 in 2012 and 17,000 again in March 2025. The source text and table disagree slightly on two of those years, so treat the figures as approximate.

Mustering has changed too. Many stockmen once worked on horseback. Today light aircraft spot cattle and a smaller crew on motorbikes rounds them up, with staff numbers cited at 19 in 2003 and up to 11 in recent years. If you follow farm news, a farm.FM story about life on a big outback cattle station gives a sense of what that scale feels like on the ground.

The sale fight of 2016

The station made national headlines in 2016. In April of that year Treasurer Scott Morrison blocked a planned sale to Williams Cattle Company, which was tied to a foreign-led consortium's purchase of the wider Kidman holdings, citing the national interest. Anna Creek lies within a weapons testing range. Morrison had also earlier blocked a Kidman sale to Pengxin Group.

In December 2016 the picture settled. Williams Cattle Company, a South Australian family business, bought Anna Creek for an estimated $16 million, while the rest of the Kidman empire went to a consortium of Hancock Prospecting (67 percent) and Shanghai CRED (33 percent). The purchase doubled the Williams family's pastoral lease area.

Native title and the dam charges

In 2012 the Federal Court determined that the Arabana people hold native title over more than 68,000 square kilometres, including Anna Creek and Lake Eyre. The claim had been lodged in January 1998 by elder Reg Dodd, and the Arabana Corporation holds the title.

In October 2025 the current owners were charged over alleged illegal dams built between 2017 and 2025, including a dam wall about two kilometres long across Balta-Baltana Creek. The alleged works breached South Australian laws on Aboriginal heritage and natural resources. These are charges, not findings, and the case should be read as pending.

Visit or learn more

Anna Creek is a working station, so it is not open for general visits, but the area around William Creek is a well-known outback stop. The ruins at The Peake, including the telegraph office, cemetery, mine site and lime kilns, and the Strangways Springs Telegraph Station ruins are on the South Australian Heritage Register. The locality of Anna Creek was officially gazetted on 26 April 2013. For broader reading on ranching worldwide, browse the ranching section of farm.FM. For the full record, see the source article's ownership history.