They have dump trucks the size of the average domestic backyard and load them with chunks of iron ore so big that each one takes a group of blokes to lift manually, which are then shipped to all parts of the world.
It’s the industry that does so much to keep the Australian economy ticking over and fuels the good times in Western Australia.
They breed big blokes up there, too.
One of those products, exported to Perth as a raw teenager in pursuit of a sporting dream, will tomorrow become the game’s record holder for the West Coast Eagles.
Dean Cox was an Eagles fan growing up on the Dampier peninsular, just a few kilometres from the hub of the most productive ore territory in Karratha. As a kid, he watched in awe of blokes like Chris Lewis, Chris Mainwaring, Guy McKenna, Glen Jakovich and John Worsfold.
Last week against St Kilda at Patersons Stadium, he played his 276th match to draw level with Glen Jakovich as the games record holder.
Tomorrow, he will hold that distinction in his own right.
It has been a big couple of weeks for one of the club’s great players. He broke another record last week for the most games by a player who began his AFL career on a rookie list. The game against the Cats will also be his 97th consecutive match, which will propel him beyond Jakovich in another milestone as the best uninterrupted run of games in club history.
Those are the numbers; the raw statistics that illustrate Cox’s unique abilities. They are impressive in an era of Australian football where statistics reign. But they tell this wonderful story only in part.
Cox was been a revelation, a man who has inexorably changed the role of the ruckman. He is a once-in-a-generation player; a man who is to this current era what Polly Farmer was to the 60s. Farmer revolutionised the art of ruck play; he palmed the ball exquisitely and developed the use of the handball as a devastating weapon, often thumping the ball off his palm to outside running players who needed not break stride to take possession.
Cox, too, has brought some unique traits to the game. At 203cm, he is an outstanding athlete. A man adept within his own right as an elite tap ruckman, and just as devastating around the ground. Until he arrived on the scene, blokes of his proportion lumbered around the ground, contested the stoppages and then watched smaller men get to work.
Dean Cox made those competitors obsolete. Dinosaurs of the game.
It isn’t just his athleticism or his ruck work that sets him apart either. His skills off both sides of his body are immaculate. Off left and right foot, he is immaculate. Many of those dinosaurs were instructed not to kick.
It prompted Leigh Matthews, when Brisbane was the competition benchmark at the turn of the century and hailed as the best team of all time, to label Cox the game’s best ruckman. Even better than Polly. Better than Simon Madden… and John Nicholls, too.
Matthews, rated as the best player of all time by Team of the Century (1995) selectors, is not prone to mete out ill-considered praise, and when the Lions were at the peak of their powers, he saw Cox play a crucial role in guiding his team to regular victories against the might of the Lions.
Brisbane boasted Michael Voss, Simon Black, Nigel Lappin and Jason Akermanis through the midfield. A quality unit where each individual complemented the other. The Eagles had Ben Cousins, Chris Judd, Daniel Kerr and Cox.
That Cox would draw such accolades from Matthews while still in the middle phase of his career is intriguing. Mostly those kinds of plaudits are reserved for post-retirement.
Matthews, himself, was regarded as an outstanding player in his glittering career at Hawthorn, but true greatness was bestowed upon him only after the best of football judges were able to reflect on the entirety of his career.
You can only imagine, when Cox is done, that he will earn even greater distinction. And he’s far from done.
Without wishing to put a hex on the champion ruckman, he is on track to become the first Eagle to play 300 games. That rolls off the tongue quite comfortably, but take a moment to sit back and absorb that in context.
In the 28 seasons in which West Coast has competed in this elite league, no man has managed the feat. Now we have a 203cm, 104kg athlete within touching distance of the milestone. He would have to play into the 2015 season and will make that decision as this year draws near to its close.
If the season continues in the way in which it has started for the decorated 32-year-old, then the club would urge him to forge on.
When the time is right, the football world will reflect on an amazing transition from a country kid who wondered whether he would ever make the grade to a true champion of the game. A kid whose spirit was almost broken at his first pre-season running session because it was all too hard.
For now, though, we will just relish the opportunity to enjoy watching him in action.
