Her employees must sign agreements never to talk to the press about her or Hancock Prospecting.

NEWYORKER: The Miner��s Daughter

Hancock Prospecting is actually a small company, with some forty employees at its offices in Perth.

NEWYORKER: The Miner��s Daughter

Hancock Prospecting may be minuscule compared with the multinationals, but its value is enormous and Rinehart controls all its shares.

NEWYORKER: The Miner��s Daughter

Hancock Prospecting owns fifty per cent of an iron-ore mine at Hope Downs, in the Pilbara, which opened in 2007.

NEWYORKER: The Miner��s Daughter

Georgina (Gina) Hope Rinehart, who owns a company called Hancock Prospecting and has recently been buying up Australian media properties, is the best known of these new tycoons.

NEWYORKER: The Miner��s Daughter

Lang thought that he had his eye on Hancock Prospecting.

NEWYORKER: The Miner��s Daughter

Her oldest child and only son, John Hancock, has a difficult relationship with his mother. (He changed his name as a young man, preferring to honor his grandfather rather than his stepfather, Frank Rinehart.) He joined the board of Hancock Prospecting at twenty-one and was seen as the heir apparent.

NEWYORKER: The Miner��s Daughter

The best known of this shafted group was Ken McCamey, who accompanied Hancock through decades of prospecting.

NEWYORKER: The Miner��s Daughter