Jack Kilfoyle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Augustus Charles Kilfoyle (9 December 1893 – 26 May 1962), known as Jack Kilfoyle, was a pastoralist born in Palmerston, Northern Territory, a suburb of Darwin. He is primarily known as a successful owner and manager of land across Australia, most notably his father's Rosewood station.
Jack was the only child of Thomas Kilfoyle, a farmer from Ireland, and his native-born wife Catherine. In 1882 and 1883, Tom had led an overlanding party with his relatives, the Duracks and the Byrnes, and established Rosewood station, which extended from the eastern Kimberley region of Western Australia into the present Northern Territory. Jack was educated in the early 1900s at Christian Brothers' College in Perth. Although he had lost the sight in one eye as the result of an insect bite that became infected, he proved an excellent athlete. On his father's death in 1908, he inherited a share in Rosewood. Jack worked on the property from 1915 and took over its management in March 1922.
Land owner
During the next 25 years, Kilfoyle built a reputation as a successful owner-manager on a medium-sized property of 734,000 acres (2,970 km2) on what was known as a "big man's frontier," increasingly dominated by companies and absentee proprietors. Having improved his beef Shorthorns with a strain of "milk" bulls acquired from Nestlé & Anglo Swiss Condensed Milk Co. (Australasia) Ltd., he put his profits into improving the property by fencing, paddocking and providing watering-places. A federal board of inquiry into land policy in 1937 praised Kilfoyle's thorough management and close supervision of Rosewood.
