Bunker Hunt’s Australia Cattle Ranches Sold : Bankrupt: Four landholdings are auctioned for about $20 million to help satisfy ex-billionaire’s debts.

Former billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt’s Australian cattle ranches, a 1.7-million-acre empire more than twice the size of Rhode Island, has been sold at auction for about $20 million.

The NBH Liquidating Trust, which is selling off Hunt’s assets to satisfy nearly $1 billion in debts, agreed to sell the four ranches in Queensland and Northern Territory to Australian Agricultural Co. for $23 million (Australian). The sale also included 36,000 head of cattle.

Eighty percent of the proceeds, or about $16 million, will go to Hunt’s biggest creditor, the Internal Revenue Service.

“This is a huge sale,” said R. Carter Pate, trustee of the NBH Liquidating Trust. “It represents everything we hold in Australia.”

Hunt, an enthusiastic horse breeder and rancher who once owned large estates in Texas and Kentucky, began investing in Australia in the mid-1960s, Pate said.

“Basically, he kept trading up until he got these properties,” said Pate.

Hunt had only visited his Australian ranches once in the last seven years, Pate said. The sale was closely followed in Australia because the ranches contain some of the best grazing land in the nation, Pate said.

“A lot of people with multimillion-dollar deals were waiting to see what the price was on this one,” he said.

The buyer is a publicly traded company founded in the 1840s with vast landholdings in Australia, Pate said. The sale is scheduled to close in mid-December.

Hunt’s oil-based empire collapsed in 1988 when he and his brother, William Herbert, filed for bankruptcy in the wake of their failed attempt to corner the world silver market.

The NBH Liquidating Trust has sold off many of Bunker Hunt’s assets, including his $20-million coin collection, but there is an estimated $70-million worth of real estate left to sell, Pate said.