MELBOURNE: Vast heaps of crushed brown rock hem the Indian Ocean at Western Australia’s Parker Point port – each a stockpile of 200,000 tonnes of iron ore, ready to be poured into a procession of bulk carriers bound for Asia’s steel mills.
Rio Tinto Group, the world’s largest iron ore producer, shipped its first cargo of the steelmaking ingredient from this spot in 1966, at the dawn of a boom that minted billionaires and lifted the Australian economy, generating A$1.3 trillion (US$820bil) in earnings in the past two decades alone.
