Billion dollar business: Aussies striking it rich in iron ore | 60 Minutes Australia

there's no doubt it's boom time in the gold and west but to most of us it seems so out of reach all those staggering figures millions of tons billions of dollars it's enough to make you dizzy all very fine for bhp but what's in it for ordinary families how can they get their slice of the action well for a start there are jobs galore out west and soon there'll be thousands more if you're lucky a couple of years work could set you up for life but be warned it can be rough out there rough and very very rewarding [Music] it's 5 a.m peak hour in wa's booming north ladies and gentlemen welcome to west angeles where the local time is 7 25 a.m it's the start of a typical working week and miners are touching down all over the pilbara to cash in on australia's 15 billion a year iron ore bonanza everything's on a big scale and money's on a big scale tires on a big scale everything's on a big scale two years ago tony dekaia was teaching maths to high school students now he's driving 200 ton trucks at rio tinto's west angeles mine it's a long way from the classroom isn't it are you just amazed at the scale of all of this yeah it's it's it's different it's incredibly different because everything's big everything's big that's right everything's in millions you know everything you do is millions you know you talk millions of tons i think that's a big truck yeah fun to drive [Music] traditionally been a man's world but it was tony's wife jeanette who first threw in a city desk job to work at the mine tony followed a year later also lured by the big money i couldn't make this sort of money in perth when we had three kids and i was at uni we were probably on 30 35 000 i remember times like that and now we're on about 220 you know 230 together so it's quite a difference [Music] here it's so nice to relax and and the stars hey the stars at night yeah have you said yeah sitting here with a few beers it could become very addictive [Music] living in the heat and the dust certainly takes a bit of adjusting and tony and jeannette's company dongga isn't exactly palatial but the views are breathtaking if someone had said to you five years ago that you'd be sitting outside your donga having a beer would you have laughed at them i would have probably said what's a donga that's probably what i would have said what do you mean what's a dogger um and if they'd explained that to me i would have gone oh i don't know about mining they're all got shaved heads and you know bellies like many miners tony and jeanette are flying fly-outs after working for a fortnight they come home for a week to their adult sons the creature comforts of perth and tony's brand new toy a twenty thousand dollar italian speed machine is it the best thing you've ever done uh well it's probably a little harsh on the kids but it's only is it it's the best thing we've ever done financially and and we do wake up every day and and think about how lucky we really are thank goodness for mining well for us anyway yes yeah the biggest boom means some mighty big holes and it doesn't come much bigger than this mount whaleback two kilometers across six kilometers long it's the biggest single iron ore pit in the world and at current prices it's making bhp billiton more than five million dollars every day of the week it doesn't stop there though the company says they'll keep digging here for at least the next 25 years it's a round-the-clock race to turn pilbara rocks into rivers of gold and it's left bhp billiton's iron ore boss tim crossley desperate we need workers yeah we need workers and at the end of the day we can train we cannot train anyone from any background really to to be a proficient and productive and safe employee but it's not just the mining giants who are raking it in a new breed of hungry mining entrepreneurs are muscling in on the action [Music] we're going to take rocks like this lamb we're going to dig them up crush them put them in trucks and then put them on ships and we're going to buy some of them back as toyotas really and like everyone who's driving a car has got to realise that half the iron in that car has come from the pilbara while thousands of workers are heading for the pilbara to make their nest egg geologist david flanagan is out to make an almighty fortune there is going to be infrastructure all through here and there's going to be a stack of deposits mined all through this area and we're going to get it up and running and then grow up to 3 million tonnes per annum it's going to be fantastic it feels it feels like a new frontier it feels like no one has given it a red hot kraken and we're going to give it our best shot [Music] oh that's got so much iron you could weld it yeah well something that's got that much on you know david's the boss of a junior prospecting company called atlas iron and he hopes to have australia's newest open cut mine on this patch of the pilbara within months we'll just hear it on this tenement here we think we've got about 20 million tonnes so we're talking about billions and billions of dollars it's huge as long as there's someone who wants to make something out of steel there's going to be a need for iron ore and it doesn't come cheaper or better than the pilgrim how long can the boom continue we think at least another seven years of very very strong demand and very strong prices you'd have to be busy wouldn't you i'm about as busy as a one-legged river dancer it's there is a lot going on around the place [Music] and what bloke wouldn't get excited about the pilbara three kilometer long trains and get paid 160 grand to drive them 200 ton trucks and 100 000 plus to sit behind the wheel talk about getting paid to play with the ultimate tonka toys i'm about to fire so push your arm um count you down and how's this for a job four three guaranteed to blow your socks off fire flicking the switch on half a million dollars worth of explosives and who knows how many tons of dirt but for all the boys toys and the big bucks they still can't get enough workers up here at tom price one of wa's most established minds there's a hundred job vacancies we were here one day i went down and uh it was all from then on it was all sweet that was it yeah you had a job just like that yeah yeah so easy melbourne boilermaker brian kenny pulled into tom price with his wife and two boys a month ago he got a job immediately and on more than twice the money he was making back home in victoria i was probably lucky to be on 30 or 40 000 for the year whereas up here i should be over a hundred thousand for the year would you like egg and bacon no thank you just salad yes please brian's wife sandra got a job the very next day do you think most people in the eastern states appreciate how big this is i don't think they can grasp the enormity of it all because it's huge i mean even just your general wages is huge over this side and and that's part of the reason why we have stopped as well because we could never make this kind of a future for ourselves over on the east side couldn't make this sort of money at home in victoria oh definitely not no definitely not but there's a price for living in this workers paradise finding decent accommodation is almost impossible home is a tent in the local caravan park a sacrifice the kenny's must make to get a slice of the boom we can actually see a long-term future in front of us and not having to work our guts out for the rest of our life basically i mean the money's there the boom's there and it's just making that step making that commitment so this boom for you really is life-changing by doing what we're doing hopefully we'll be able to just get that one step ahead and be set for when we're old old real old older late 90s to around 2000 you could have probably picked these houses up for about 150 to 50 000 as more blow-ins arrive in the north the housing crisis is pushing rents through the roof and transforming the most unlikely streets into millionaires row what are these houses along here worth you'd be listing them around about the 800 000 upwards for the five row type houses the brick ones could be even getting close to a million dollars now 800 000 for a fibro shack that's that's about it yes accommodation is so tight here in port hedland that even the local pub has been bought up and shut down it's been closed down and turned into accommodation by the mining companies who obviously need to find opportunities of mining thanks for closing a pub down turn it into housing well there's a few pubs in the town but uh that's that's a bit of a sacrilege there you go i'll see it's a bit quiet in it rob frye brought his family to port hedland from tasmania 19 years ago to run the local tafe back then the town was a relative backwater he's witnessed the soaring profits for mining companies and record royalties for government but rob says headland has little to show for it this is the engine room of australia there's no doubt about that but the fact is that for all the money that is going out a very small minute amount is coming back has this boom caught a lot of people by surprise absolutely it surprised everyone this growth spurt has caught us a bit by surprise and we're catching up i mean we're trying to catch up and we're we're working fast and you know i think if you come back here in a couple of years time these places will look significantly different [Music] meantime the boom seems unstoppable here at port hedland they're sending 130 million dollars of iron ore overseas every week it's already australia's biggest tonnage port but get this the miners say in the next five years they will triple that figure [Music] right now headland is desperately short of nurses teachers and child carers lured away by the high mining pay packets port helen is an upside down town in this town it's the workers the trades people they're the people with all the money so the blue collar workers here earn a heck of a lot more than white collars absolutely absolutely even my own children they do very well and they exceed my income as the pilbara chases asia's unquenchable demand for iron ore so the relentless push for manpower must continue there is no doubt this boom is causing growing pains for mining towns but for those willing to go west this is indeed the land of opportunity been the icing on the cake for us definitely we've kind of eaten our veggies and now we're having a big dessert i can't imagine mining being any better it's sticking out of the ground it's almost i reckon a once in a lifetime opportunity to get in and to do something fantastic now it really is ah it's pretty good hello i'm liam bartlett thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes australia make sure you subscribe to our channel you can also download the nine now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minutes content

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 222,130

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Charles Wooley, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Allison Langdon, Tom Steinfort, Ellen Fanning, Peter Overton, Karl Stefanovic, Ray Martin, Sarah Abo, Tom Price, Iron ore, western australia, mining, miners, gold, oil, the mines, gina rinehart, west angeles, perth, explosions, heavy machinery

Id: xFE1lAPh0g4

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020