Surmounting the challenge of a weaker currency, Australia’s 50 richest tycoons are collectively better off from a year ago. They added $9 billion, or around 4%, to take their combined wealth to $222 billion. Fortunes drawn from iron ore, an export mainstay, remain unshakeable at the top. Mining magnate Gina Rinehart held onto her long-standing position as the country’s richest person, though her wealth dipped slightly to $30.2 billion. In recent months, Rinehart has been busy dealmaking to expand her interests in lithium, the metal used in EV batteries.

Dressed in Republican-red colours, Mrs Rinehart sat listening in her second-row seat of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.The speech was one of the best she had heard from a politician, the billionaire Australian said. “He has won the last nine best speeches given here at CPAC and I think we just heard the tenth. It was a privilege to watch it,” Mrs Rinehart told The Australian Financial Review on the sidelines of the conference in Maryland.

Gina Rinehart’s companies Hancock Prospecting and Roy Hill have donated a steel sculpture valued at $60,000 to Cottesloe council. The work, Sandbar, is by artist James Rogers, one of Australia’s leading sculptors, this week’s council meeting was told. “It’s a very generous offer,” mayor Lorraine Young told the meeting. 

Australia’s swimmers completed the World Swimming Championships in Doha by doubling down on gold. Twenty-year-old backstroker Isaac Cooper was crowned 50m backstroke world champion while the women’s 4x100m medley relay team surged home to help Australia finish with an overall medal haul of 16.

At just 19, Mollie O’Callaghan—affectionately known as Mollie O—is a name Australia is quickly recognizing as a member of the country’s latest group of swimming golden girls of the pool. Mollie O’Callaghan Eager to Lead Australian Assault on Olympic Games in Paris.

Isaac Cooper and the women’s 4x100m medley relay team have ensured Australia finished the world swimming championships on a high, winning two gold medals on the final night in Doha to bring their tally in the pool to three.

Congratulations on an outstanding performance Rayna Buckle, Natalia Caloiera, Georgia Courage-Gardiner, Alessandra Ho, Kiera Gazzard, Margo Joseph-Kuo, Zoe Poulis and Milena Waldmann 💥

This act symbolises the essence of Hope Hancock. Yet all she will say is, “I am an ordinary woman married to a remarkable man.” She underestimates herself, for she is as near the complete person as anyone I have met. Mrs. Hancock describes the gold mine where they had their first home – a caravan – as “a hole in the ground.” It was 100 miles from Wiluna, in the north-west, and her only neighbours were three men who lived in a nearby hut. “But I loved the life,” she said, looking back on those early days. “I had been brought up on a north I west station where conversation revolved round windmills, sheep, and fences, and to go into the new world of mining was very stimulating.”