Documentary Transcript of Mining Industry Outlook - Australia

Australia is a vast and lucky land

beneath our feet is a treasure trove of

unimaginable riches with this story is

about much more than precious minerals

and dusty mineshaft

for 150 years mining has changed the

lives of us all in unexpected and

extraordinary way

you.


If this is not what you were looking for, and you prefer knowing which Audit and inspection management software you should choose, check this article out.

it sparked waves of mass emigration and

ignited political revolt the stockade is

taken and 30 people aligned if they were

the shock troops of Australian democracy

but mining has also toppled Prime

Minister's their only job is to deliver

a profit.

if that means that they bring the whole

world down with them when today it's

wrenched Aboriginal peoples land away

yet mining could be the very thing that

offers the first Australians hope well

I've seen in my lifetime is a

transformation of the mining industry

from the pillages to the major investors

in the indigenous world.

it saves Australia from financial ruin

and made people rich in the most

unpredictable way there's always been a

link between mining and prostitution

comets for them was the same as the

chronic for men they got the gold as

well but this human bust business.

ignites ranging clashes over who gets

the money the police came and they told

us they don't get out they're going to

come they're gonna burn houses

mining rich history is a battleground

that has divided and yet forged the

nation has an effect on every aspect of

our life so the story of mining in

Australia story power land

and money

this is the epic history of mining.

[Music]

[Music]

18:51 small colonial town of Melbourne

has caught a fever have you ever held a

bar of gold it's very heavy but you

somehow start scratching at it you you

want to have some it does have a certain

magic allure about it and particularly

the people in the 19th century because

it was a way of getting suddenly rich

and it was legal

word of mouth runs through the streets

of Melbourne and its immediate suburbs

that there's gold to be found that

there's wealth to be made and it's

within the reach of anyone who can get

to the diggings as quickly as possible

hundreds thousands of people down tools

left their jobs left their families and

headed up country

there's a premium on wheelbarrows on

blankets on all sorts of paraphernalia

to take to the diggings by the time they

get out to diggers rest and further up

towards the dean's the tracks are

littered with they are now unwanted.

paraphernalia of mining as people throw

away all their encumbrance is simply an

attempt to get some diggings as soon as

possible gold has already been found in

New South Wales but the wealthiest gold

fields in the world are within 100 miles

of Melbourne

the precious metal lies just inches from

the service and in there further to get

rich the thousands who come here here at

the earth leaving its guard like a

battlefield this is Australia's first

mining boom. the long fight to grab the

riches has begun if you arrived on a

gold field like this you would look

around and see what looked like to be.

the best spot the further into the gully

you went the deeper the gold was going

to be the further back the shallower and

therefore it was a bit easier to dig the

main thing was that if you marked out a

claim for yourself you had to be

actively digging on it you couldn't just

be bagging. all these bits of land for

yourself and not be digging on them gold

could absolutely change your life

overnight and it wasn't just wealth I

mean I think this is really important to

understand is that gold represented.

autonomy it represented being your own

master it represented not having to work

for wages anymore so it wasn't just the

kind of bucks in your pocket that was

important but it was the freedom and

independence that the whole gold-digging

lifestyle represented.

the fields may offer the chance of a

golden future but striking a Grich is no

sure thing mining is a gamblers game

your chances of getting rich on a gold

field would have depended really on

three things firstly whether you had any

geological knowledge am i reading the

vast majority of the people in the

rushes didn't have your ability to work.

hard and persevere and thirdly having

found something you then had to keep it

you had to somehow dodge the the pubs

not get it stolen from you and there are

some brigands around a lot of the people

were armed and so if you still have

those three hurdles you got rich and I

don't know where the odds are probably

at one and every hundred or something

like that the odds may be long but the

promise of vast sums of money brings a

rush of humankind not seen before or

since.

mining is shaping the fate of the nation

and is now the catalyst for the first

international mass migration into

Australia a multiracial land is born

gold is a phenomenal magnet that reaches

really across the whole world

so people are coming not only from

Britain and Ireland as they had before

but they're coming from North America

coming from Northern Europe the reason

coming from China for every person

already living in Victoria another five

arrived

within a single decade the gold boom

will push the population to more than

half a million.

by 1853 Melbourne is the fastest-growing

city in the world but it can't code you

had people arriving so fast there was

simply not enough accommodation so they

begin to create new building in the

first six months of ATM. to defray their

bills a thousand buildings in the

central city of Melbourne and then when

they finally have no more accommodation

the authorities allow the building of a

canvas town a tent town on the south

bank of the Yarra just to accommodate

the sheer numbers of people who are

coming the sailcloth

that powered the migrant ships is torn

down and used as makeshift shelter for

10,000 homeless diggers

a vast campsite in Australia's first

modern city

the meals can pass probably like a

third-world shantytown a favela poor

water supply poor sewage but many people

life was pretty grim it was exciting if

you have made gold

it was exciting if you're on the way to

get gold you had enough money in your

pockets to make your way there but if

you'd come back and you'd run out of

money then it was a pretty desperate

place to be but in spite of what awaits

them the hopeful immigrants keep on

coming and mining changes the face of a

continent within a few short years one

in ten Victorians will be. Chinese and

they'll make up 1/5 of all the miners on

gold fields

one of them is a young and very

ambitious entrepreneur by the name of

local um Bing local Meng was a young

trader operating throughout the Indian

Ocean and it came straight over to try

his hand on the golf field went up to

the goal field played every month and

didn't make much money he then decided

that he could make a lot of money by

selling food particularly to the people

who needed it they all wanted tea they

wanted rise they want to Oh Kim they

want alcohol he could provide all those

things from Asia.

mining is spawning business and trade

needed to sustain a new trickle down

economy is being created and in the

battle to claim a stake of Australia's

new wealth local Ming is winning

he was also heavily involved in bringing

Chinese miners house to Australia as

well as providing them with foodstuffs

he realized that he could bring out them

in put them to work

provide their food and make money all

along the way he became one of the

wealthiest businesspeople in Victoria at

that time and contemporary accounts

regard his operations on a colossal

scale

the mining millions are flowing into

every corner of society Melbourne is

awash with cash

and when the Sun Goes Down the gamblers

have enjoyed luck in the fields are

ready to blow their winnings Friday

night was the night out in Mobile

benefit is not daddy could be this awful

even bother because you have thought

these rising numbers of young men with

money to spend

I'm there were plenty places to spend

with cafes restaurants theaters brothels

the whole range of places are available

to the young men who came back it money

to spend

Gold's worth more than fifteen million

dollars in today's money is pouring into

Melbourne every week a new Treasury is

commissioned to store all the bullion in

mining has created the fastest-growing

economy in the world did gold change

Australia fundamentally sure did and

gold forces communities to ask this

question how permanent are we how

important are we what's our place in a

broader scheme of things and if you've

got gold coming and if you've got money

coming in that's a very easy answer to

give we're very important if we're

important we do need a grand Parliament

house we do need a city with boulevards

we do need to attract artists and

writers and be patrons of cultural

civilized things because we have arrived

this is our place in society

[Music]

a pastoral land of shape and Shearer's

is changing into a cosmopolitan country

driven by gold but in the rush for

riches mining ignites unexpected and

bitter battles

conflicts that would forge the laws of

the land and spark a new era of racism I

[Music]

pick the racial hostility to the Chinese

that the European miners expressed which

had many many grounds there were

political grounds they couldn't

participate there are moral grounds

accused of all sorts of vices there are

biological grounds they racially

inferior all sorts of grounds for hating

the Chinese but at the bottom of all

those arguments that the Chinese - did

not have any right to share in the

wealth of the country the politicians of

the day agree the fundamental question

of who deserves to cash in on a mining

boom inspires the passing of racist laws

[Music]

the victorian government put a kid for

poll tax on Chinese coming by ship and

they also limited the number of Chinese

a boat food cake by putting a ratio

between how many Chinese and challege

this will definitely race this

legislation it was singling the Chinese

out it was very draconian and when one

looks at it now one says it's hardly

believable that this actually happened

Victoria maybe slamming the door shut on

the Chinese but they are a people

willing to go to extraordinary lengths

to win the battle for a cut of

Australia's mining Millions

from 1855 to 1857 more than 15,000

Chinese migrants sailed here

to the tiny fishing village of rogue in

South Australia

indistinct single file formation they

walk more than 500 kilometers to the

Goldfield avoiding the victorian

immigration authorities one of the men

is rustling Dewey's great-grandfather

wheeling my great-grandfather had no

idea what was in front of them when I

got off the boat and started the March

the Jenny would have been terribly hard

you know not a not knowing where you're

going and walking through the the Margar

area in Victoria the scrubland

the the harshness of the ground and

they're just basically that Bush

conditions that we have there's a lot of

parts where the land is very arid and

dry and consequently they sunk a number

of wells in their journey along the way

so that the people coming behind them

had water to drink along the way

but Ross's great-grandfather and his

fellow countrymen are heading for

trouble tensions between the white

diggers and the Chinese are reaching

breaking point the fight for the mining

money is about to explode

into a race riot

by the beginning of the 1860s gold worth

eighteen billion dollars in today's

money has been dug from Australia's

Witcher but fears are growing that the

boom times are about to end

so news first right at lambing flat in

New South Wales sparks a rush of

desperate European and Chinese miners

once again the battle is on to seize a

share of the mining money I think for

the miners who are struggling to keep

being miners it's really important they

want to stay on the golf fields they

want to keep earning money so they

really resent the arrival of large

numbers of Chinese who are going to

compete with them for this gold

I think racial hatred has many grounds

there are many reasons for it

but it comes to a head really when

people are in conflict about money as

night falls on the 30th of June 1861 an

angry mob of 3,000 European diggers said

upon their Chinese rivals

lambing flat will become one of the most

disturbing lace riots in Australia's

history the European miners gather and

they determined to drive the Chinese off

the once abroad they had a banner which

says roll up roll up no Chinese it has a

Eureka flag in the middle so it's

directly aligning the added Chinese

cause there's a sort of Australian

democracy cause and say then March

going to the Chinese camps gathering

their belongings they're going to put in

bonfires and burn laid cut off their

hair their pigtails

sometimes they pinioned two flags as

like trophies and they drive the Chinese

away they were just on the rampage

really they were able to go from Chinese

camped Chinese camp to Chinese camp and

drive people away by whatever means was

necessary

[Music]

it takes two long weeks for the police

and government troops to finally restore

order but the state politicians know

they must act ironically the solution to

a race riot provoked by money as yet

more racist legislation the anti Chinese

right lambing flat seriously worried the

government in Sydney they weren't so

added much about the Chinese but they're

worried about the disorder on the

Goldfield there are very few troops in

the district now worried about an

outbreak of rebellion the European

miners when even though the violence

that they engaged in is condemned they

got what they wanted they got

restrictive legislation in terms of

immigration and they got a different

management of the goldfields which made

it much easier to keep Chinese away from

particular golf field so they once

the Chinese immigration restrictions act

is a direct response to the lambing flat

riot a conflict between miners and a

fight for the mining millions per stone

the seeds for one of the most infamous

immigration policies the world will ever

see

for the irony is that this was an

opportunity through having so many

different cultures coming to the one

place that could have created a

multicultural Australia was a head start

to a multicultural Australia and yet

instead through the conflict born of

being in such fierce competition and

having the Chinese do better than their

white counterparts it ended up feeding

racism and xenophobia in Australia that

spilled over into the White Australia

Policy that went on for another 50 years

by the mid 1860s in places like Ballarat

and Bendigo and right across the eastern

states the surface gold has all but

disappeared the boom could be over but

the very fact that Australia's treasure

trove of minerals is now locked deep

underground is the catalyst for a

dramatic new era that will have

repercussions for generations to come

the big money mining company has arrived

alluvial mining dies hard in Victoria

but it dies it's replaced by different

sort of mining mining that needs capital

mining that needs companies mining that

needs infrastructure a lot of

infrastructure to get down to the deep

leaves or the the quartz reeks in which

that the gold is embedded they needed

more capital to do this so they started

forming syndicates then they started

forming companies and then they started

trading in the shares a lot of means is

that first of all you have all the

individual prospectors jostling

competing for gold and then the

companies move in but it doesn't become

the classic capital versus labor thing

because a lot of the miners are able to

invest in the companies they have their

shareholders they are looking for their

dividends there was this sense of common

purpose everyone wanted to make money

the diggers can buy shares in the

company they are working for and get a

slice of the new corporate wealth Gold

Fever becomes share fever local stock

exchanges bring up in mining towns from

Victoria to Queensland the rocky

relationship between mining and the

share market has begun

by that time we'd broken loose with

being a convict colony we wanted to

prove I think that we were as opposite

as possible to the regulator's

beginnings of Australia and yeah

everybody had their chance but you had

to be in it to win it it was pretty well

all insider trading if you like because

they traded amongst themselves some

people would know that they'd been a

strike over the hill at block number 121

or something like that they'd rush out

and buy the shares other people would

sell them was what they did of a night

when they weren't drinking and if they

do it when they were drinking they had a

problem

the rise and rise of the corporation

during the 1880s means that mining and

stock market gambling becomes synonymous

even the birth of what will become the

richest mining company in the world is

decided on the turn of card

Broken Hill was originally founded by

sin because of seven guys but none of

them had much money and so to raise the

capital necessary to keep on testing and

a saying more they had to traffic a bit

in the shares and sell bits and pieces

to people the most expensive card game

in Australia's history was a game of

yuca which was played between McCulloch

the station manager and they a stranger

passing through over the price of a

114th share in Broken Hill that was

whether it was going to be a hundred and

twenty pounds or 200 pounds the stranger

won so he got one fourteenth of Broken

Hill for a hundred and twenty pounds

in 1885 the news syndicate float their

proposition as a company Broken Hill

proprietary is formed bhp in today's

money that 114 share would be worth

around 12 billion dollars and the boom

times begin for bhp the money created by

gold mining has already been invested in

property and built towns right across

Australia the jewel in the crown is

Melbourne the marvelous Melbourne a city

that is the envy of the world but now

the children of the Gold Rush generation

want to get in on this property boom and

make a killing of their own many of them

of course want to emulate their fathers

they want to make a pile of gold as well

and some of them of course do so not

through gold but through land

speculation people were getting on the

trains about making their way out to

land sales on the edge of the city

I mean the city itself the speculators

were spilling out of the stock exchange

and onto Collins Street where they're

exchanging paper and doing deals in the

open air but in just a few short years

of rabid speculation this mining

inspired boom of the 1880s becomes a

devastating bust if mining help build

Melbourne and mining helped to break it

as well at that point because there was

too much money around and we didn't know

how to handle the thing you know modern

parable but one hundred and something

years ago we had a version of the GFC

and it was a big bust if the same thing

were to happen today that would be

equivalent to say all the small banks

and Australia and two of the big four

closing their doors and say you can't

get your deposits back you just gotta

whistle for your money you can imagine

the upheaval that would cause in society

that's how big the 1893 bank closures

were

it's a volatile cycle that will be

repeated in the years to come

mining provoking rocketing boons the

turn to crushing busts but as the

eastern states sink into deep depression

the latest twist in this roller coaster

journey is about to begin mining 'he's

next boom we'll rescue australia from

economic ruin 1893 and new south wales

and victoria gripped by recessions but

in amongst the misery of the east has

suddenly hoped to the west gold has been

found beneath the parched earth of

calgary six hundred kilometres east of

Perth

Australia has a two-speed economy and

the rush is on again I think there was a

combination of hope and despair people

were desperate for work so they were

forced to come but is also that a lure

that gold offers and the prospect of a

fortune to be one you I ever landed in

Fremantle and that meant it was a walk

of 600 commoners Pakal girlie or you

might have got off on the south coast at

esperance in which case it was only

about 350 or 400 but there is a kind of

stagecoach service for those who can

afford it but most of them walk tour

they push their wheelbarrows and the

great thing was to find a mate that went

with you so that if you had an accident

or fell ill or somebody who could look

after you

these are no fly-in fly-out workers but

they come in their tens of thousands

from the East desperate to grab a share

of the new mining honey

this second great gold rush not only

makes w a rich it props up a Depression

ravaged nation

mining is forging Australia's first

single economy

the lot of the miners who came to

Western Australia sent money back to

their families and the loss of

industries in the Eastern colonies

exported material to Western Australia

so not only gave the economy a boost but

it helped to integrate Australia into a

common economy and a common market and

that long-term benefit was probably one

of the greatest things that happened

with the nineties call brush one of

those to arrive in the West has come

further than most within a generation

Herbert Hoover will be sitting in the

White House

but for now this 22 year old mining

engineer from Iowa has plans to run the

booming gold fields of w-a

with maximum efficiency for maximum

profit Hoover may not have originated

the plan but Buick mooring for whom he

worked were identified with the idea

that rather than rely on the native

Australian prospector with his

independent mindedness it might be

sensible to bring in Italian labour or

what is now Yugoslavia over people

thought to be more docile and prepared

to work for less

[Music]

this is where Hoover's cheap foreign

workers come to

the sons of Gwalior mine deep in the

West Australian dammit

[Music]

almost half a century after golden coast

Chinese mining and the future American

president have sparked a new wave of

immigration the sons of Alderman had a

reputation West is ruthlessly very early

on really early on that up to 70% of the

workforce were Italian or Slav Louis men

would have been living in these hot

dusty arid isolated conditions with

absolutely no facilities or no comfort

whatsoever the days of the lone digger

striking at rich of all but God under

Hoover's regime wages are cut and ours

increased in the battle for the mining

money it's the companies who earn the

minerals and the wealth now there were

no rich liners they were eking out a

living I mean underground miners never

make a fortune and not only do they not

make a fortune but they lose in terms of

health

and living in fairly primitive out that

condition it's always in the interests

of the mining company to make a profit

regardless the money that they didn't

send home a lot of the men spent it on

booze or gambling - or drinking beers

there right and that the only thing that

would cure the dust underground was to

come and have a beer after work you

certainly couldn't cure it with water so

for many men drinking beer after work

was what you had to do

right across the east and goldfields

alcohol is easier to find than good

drinking water with tens of thousands of

people that were flocking to the field

they just wasn't the water to support

them either for drinking through to

basic hygiene you couldn't wash your

body for instance people died of thirst

it was that harsh and that that people

it was not uncommon for people to die at

first

[Music]

[Music]

water is more precious than gold but in

amongst the despair is daring

in 1898 mining is the catalyst for one

of the most ambitious and expensive

construction schemes in Australia's

history the pipeline is really an

extraordinary project in fact it

fascinated the entire world here we have

people who are thinking that they can

shift water almost 600 kilometres uphill

the plan was that water could be taken

from the reliable sources just back of

person the darling

Scot and a series of pumping stations

could carry that water the whole 600

kilometres inland until it got too cool

Guardian Calgary mining is so valuable

to the economy that the engineer's CY

O'Connor is handed the equivalent of the

annual state budget to make the plan

work but nothing like this has ever been

attempted anywhere before the pipeline

would be a world first

it's a crazy notion in a way but he did

it in the back of the envelope stuff

he'd say right we've got to move at 550

kilometres okay we'll need around about

77,000 barrels of English and German

cement we'll need more maybe 60,000

pipes and we're going to move about you

know five million gallons around that 20

million litres of fresh water every day

yeah look it's doable and you can

understand looking at that that people

in West Australia is saying a scheme of

madness

but after five long years piece by piece

the pipeline comes together until

finally from the 24th of January 1903

fresh drinking water arrives in Calgary

the richest gold fields in the world

have been saved we can pour money into

the Australian coppers for the next 100

years

[Music]

their first maybe quenched but the

diggers of Calgary are still ravenous

there's a new kind of rush to grab a

share of the mining money in the heat of

the desert sex sells

Asians in the gold pharisee whistles

early in the 1890s were perfect if you

were a sex industry or entrepreneur

because you had lots of men there

without female company so they're lonely

they're sex starved they don't have the

constraints of family and polite society

to inhibit what they want to do so it's

a frontier kind of environment a bit

like the Wild West in America the

promise for them was the same as the

promise for the men they got the gold as

well the earnings that they could make

on the gold fields were 14 times at

least for those 20 times what they could

have earned if they'd stayed in any

other woman's occupations

local prostitutes are joined by sex

workers from across the world who see

their chance to claim a share of the

mining money women from Asia are

particularly prevalent mining has not

only established the red light capital

of Australia but the boom is responsible

for the start of an organised criminal

industry that will run for decades to

come

we're used to thinking about sex

trafficking as being something

associated with the late 20th century

but this has been going on in Australia

for a very long time the traffic from

Japan was fairly well organized their

syndicates were identifying girls buying

them from their families smuggling them

out shipping them around in a very

organized way and profiting from the

sexual bondage from sex to the share

market in good times and bad mining has

infiltrated almost every aspect of

Australian life since the 1850s

ironically even the greatest economic

disaster of the 20th century is good

news for this boom and bust business as

Wall Street crashes in 1929 and

Australia plummets into depression the

gold fields of waa

that have been declining for 25 years

and they could come back currencies were

the value in everywhere which actually

improved the price of gold in Australian

terms this price of gold actually

doubled between 1931 and 1934 to 8

pounds 10 shillings an ounce so gold

mining was suddenly a very attractive

industry again the Golden Mile so with

just a mile of gold bearing are in the

world if it has not been both of the

economic and the psychological boost

that the revival of the Gold Fields gave

the recovery would have been slower and

I think the national mood would have

been darker

in spite of the new boom tensions are

mounting in the gold mines of Calgary

[Music]

the low-paid Yugoslavia and Italian

immigrants first brought in by a certain

Herbert Hoover a seen as undercutting

the white Holly - 17 years after landing

flax

the battle between different races for a

share of the mining money

sparks one of the worst riots in

Australia's history it broke out on

Australia Day 1934 when a flight erupted

at the home from home hotel between an

Italian and an angle Australian and the

Anglo was not over the cracked his head

on the concrete floor of the bar and

died and that gave rise to two days of

pretty unrestrained anti daegu rioting

as it was called lazora Donna Beach

arrived in Calgary from Yugoslavia in

1901 he's worked in the local gold mine

for the past 14 years his 12 year old

son Peter watches on as the Aussie

miners go on the rampage

big group came around this hotel and

some kid threw a rock and hit the window

and and this hotel and there seemed to

be the trigger then everybody rush

forward Chili's everything started the

road from there there was an Italian

club and then there's Italian wine

saloon a couple of doors wide and is the

Italian boarding house he did the sign

there Pili's up and then fiddle light

for them

the police came and they told us you

know get out you know we can't protect

you just you know stop 1/2 the bushes

somewhere wherever you can because we

can't protect you they're going to come

they gonna burn a house the redundant

[ __ ] find refuge but watch on

helplessly as the rioters finally reach

their home

we could see our street in our health

and when my mother sort of big flame

comes you know they'll have scallion and

he sort of screams and just chopped you

know and we came back and I saw our

house and I looked at it all caught up

at all or such you mumbles you know yeah

I'll never forgive you for this and I

haven't even forgiving them

[Music]

after two long days of fearsome rioting

three men are dead 100 buildings

destroyed and 400 southern Europeans

left homes Calgary riots marked the

beginning of the end of the thirties

gold boom

it will be 20 years before Australia's

next great mineral discovery sparks

another battle to share and the wealth

of a nation the days of the new super

rich mining magnate have arrived

[Music]

it's the start of the wet season of 1952

and a prospector by the name of Laing

Hancock is about to make the greatest

and richest discovery so far in the

history of Australian mining

the legend has it that in November 1952

in the middle of the monsoon in the

middle of the hemisphere Rangers in a

vast Pilbara Liang Hancock with his wife

hope in his tiny little aircraft got

stuck and needed to get out he had to

fly below the clouds and there he sees

the gorge wall I nor as far as the eye

can see hundreds of kilometres

stretching to the horizon Liang Hancock

had discovered what he would later call

his rivers of God

[Music]

Hancock can't know it yet but in the

years to come

the Pilbara will open up into a mining

area larger than Tasmania and contain 24

billion tons of high-grade iron ore

but he is canny enough to sign an

extraordinary royalty deal with Rio

Tinto it's a move that will not only

change his life but that of his daughter

Gina the interesting thing about this

contract was one it made them instant

multi millionaires the other thing was

that whoever signed that contract forgot

to put in a fun set cause there was no

into it Gina Rinehart today is worth

twenty nine billion dollars she is the

richest woman on the planet and a lot of

that money skims from that little deal

that was made all those years ago

[Music]

Hancock's discovery likes the blue touch

paper

there's a sudden rush of new mineral

discovery this is the biggest mining

boom since the gold rush

and the impact is felt right across

Australia the start of the 60s saw

several of the greatest mineral

discoveries in Australia's history there

was the iron ore in the Pilbara there

was book sight in the darling Rangers

and wiper at the same time we discovered

the coal in the Bowen Basin these huge

discoveries together with modern

logistics have transformed Australia

[Music]

unlimited iron ore from from Christ

human and gold rally the Horde

irrigation potential and Queensland

crops I Scotland blessed through the new

frontiers in a promised land

these may be times of feel-good

nation-building but ironically it's

foreign dollars that will keep the boom

time is rolling on

Australia simply doesn't have the cash

to pay for the extraordinary

infrastructure needed to develop vast

isolated areas like the Pilbara

the battle to share in the wealth has

escalated

[Music]

Australia is now fighting to even own

the minerals that have made the nation

rich

[Music]

we had a lot of money to make from the

pilgrim but we couldn't dig it all

ourselves we needed to bring somebody in

we couldn't subcontract it we actually

had to give over parts of our own

inheritance to foreign companies so they

can help make money on our behalf and

nothing really did rub against the

Australian mindset not just of

self-reliance but also you know in a

sense of the of the purity is one of the

unstated fears in the Australian

settlement is foreign takeover whether

it's a direct invasion by the yellow

hordes or whether it is some very very

rich party in another country working

out how to dig out stuff better than we

can and I think by the 60s we were

seeing another manifestation of this

fear of invasion it's the fear of

foreign takeover not direct military

invasion

[Music]

as Australia battles with its demons

international events are about to

conspire in its favor

the Vietnam War has pushed the demand

for a new age metal called nickel

sky-high it's desperately needed to make

guns and tanks but a strike at a Supply

Factory in Canada has caused a worldwide

shortage so by sheer gamblers luck a

chance discovery 600 kilometers east of

Perth is the perfect find at the perfect

time there was a lot of serendipity

about the discovery of nickel at camp

powder they sunk the silver lake shaft

at the start of 1966 and by sheer

accident they hit very good grades of

nickel at a very good time and suddenly

something we hadn't known about a couple

of years before was the basis of a

forest Stock Exchange fortune being made

a small company started running after

that one of those small companies is

Poseidon they find what they're

convinced is high-grade nickel and lots

of it 100 years since the crazed

speculation of the gold rush the

greatest share market gamble in the

history of Australia is about to begin

Poseidon's find it when Derek

electrified the market the shares ran

from $1 to $5 in the first week and if

I'd happen to own the shares of that

stage I would have probably sold out

somewhere around 3 and thought I was

being pretty smart

[Music]

look this was a special brand of crazy

and suddenly everyone wanted to be part

of it the newspapers of writing page one

stories about it it's on it's on your

television and people are actually

turning up at the stock exchange to

watch their shares go up onto the form

of authorizing that they're engaged in

here they're sitting there with a

binoculars in media in the people's

gallery watching their share prices go

up

in the first stage I bought twelve

thousands here and then when they come

into the drilling program I bought

another thirteen thousand years so I had

twenty five thousand years in total and

when they got to $40 I said well that's

one really because if you multiply 25 by

40 say about two weeks later of our 80

so I thought I've got another nurse two

million as I just counting the millions

we didn't say 12 months my share

portfolio went from fifteen thousand to

eight million dollars but poseidon's

just the beginning unlike its discovery

that's legitimate unscrupulous companies

jump on the bandwagon and send the share

market haywire

every penny stock around the place died

to rise in price because it Poseidon

confined nickel or some other magic

metal so could anyone else all the penny

stocks were implicitly undervalued and

so people started hunting on the wild of

stocks around the place that never had a

prospect of finding anything a whole

ragtag and bobtail on the speculative

end of a stock exchange just went

straight up some people were selling

shares the leases that did not exist it

was just straight ripoff but people

weren't to know because at this time

we're fairly innocent about the stock

market and of course the front page of

the paper was telling us these prices

are all going up everyone was punting on

mining mining was a national Savior at

this point and you know you couldn't

lose apparently a generation of

Australians have never shown any

interest in mining or the share market

before are suddenly fighting for their

cut of the mining money we've moved from

a gold rush mentality where everyone

goes and digs for themselves to a purely

lotto based transaction which if you're

holding a lucky piece of paper you've

made a lot of money on the share market

this is a mum and dad sitting at the

kitchen table with a piece of paper had

finally struck a lotto oh there were

people buying shares we've never bought

a share before and they were doing it on

the basis of a tip they got from their

barber or a taxi driver or whatever

there's no saying in America and Wall

Street when the bellhops get in it's

time to get out

in a frenzied atmosphere poseidon share

price peaks at two hundred and eighty

dollars and then the bubble bursts

i sold the first thousand on the way

down after they'd peaked at three

hundred many many months later eighty

three dollars and I eventually just sold

out that were half of the my sold down

to twelve dollars and then I still held

the remaining thirteen child when they

were in the liquidation when Western

money took them over said it wasn't a

very smart business hope I got greedy

after the shenanigans of Poseidon the

next thirty years

sea mining did into general decline

but 100 and more years of history have

proved that the next boom is never far

away

[Music]

the daily Armada sets sail from Port

Hedland each tanker carries up to

250,000 tons of iron ore dug from the

vast Australian Pilbara the value of

each containment load is around 30

million dollars the iron ore and coal

boom of the 21st century could be the

biggest boon yet

and in a deep irony it's all courtesy of

an old enemy

here we now have China emerging as one

of the major powers again it's no

extraneous largest trading partner so it

is quite ironic when I look at the whole

situation I see how the early Chinese

who came out to mine here were being

discriminated against and how now the

Chinese are helping to boost the

Australian economy if an Australian from

the 1850s could meet an Australian today

the first question they ask is what's

this thing with China the Chinese came

in the 1850s as they're coming today

but the Chinese in the 1850s were kicked

out the Chinese today are not only the

number one source country for an

immigration program they're coming with

skills that we've never seen before

we're digging rocks for them but in

return we're getting their brains

Australian mining is worth less than 10%

of the economy and is estimated to be

more than 70% foreign owned but in

another echo of the past it's still seen

as the nation's Savior in times of

economic despair what are we going to

tell her free labor and in marginal face

the 150 year long battle still rages for

a share of the mining Millions

[Music]

while they last we're now seeing the

rise of what the industry of those two

is resource nationalism whereby

countries impose a higher tax on what

are some of the most profitable

industries out there in order to ensure

that the public gained something from

the good times that are rolling on so

the two sides of the mining coin

outrageous prosperity but then on the

other side a deep depression the value

that this coin is what you do with the

prosperity to avoid the depression of

the other side we're telling ourselves

this cycle is different that this is a

super cycle that it's going to run for

20 years but what Australia's history

tells us is sure is night follows day

and boom will lead to a bust

still to come on dirty business

after years of destruction because

mining somehow be the great hope for

Aboriginal people

and a fight for power mining goes to war

with Canberra I have no doubt whatever

that the mining industry is more

powerful than the Australian government

to find out more go to SBS comm au

forward slash dirty business

[Music]

you

[Music]