Inside Australia's billion-dollar bid to take on China's rare earth dominance

Drive three hours north of Perth, and you'll arrive in Eneabba - barren and desolate, just the odd hill in the distance. This is Western Australia mining territory. Buried in this vast terrain is a massive pit, full of what looks like mounds of worthless dirt.

But appearances can be deceiving: this pit is home to a million-tonne stockpile containing critical minerals, better known as rare earths, which are crucial for making electric vehicles, wind turbines and defence equipment.  And Australia is betting big on this discovery with a billion dollar loan to a mining company to extract these metals - and disrupt a supply chain that China has monopolised.

Will the gamble pay off? China's chokehold on rare earths has hit home with US President Donald Trump's trade wars. When Beijing restricted exports, a powerful bargaining chip in tariff negotiations, it sent manufacturers around the world into their war rooms. China, they realised with alarm, had the power to stop their factories.

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