It was one of the strangest skill sets in hot demand as coronavirus arrived on Australian shores. Fortescue Metals Group employees, armed with little more than Allen keys, worked around the clock in April assembling flat-pack furniture. Beds, couches and kitchen tables had been hastily bought by staff in Perth and sent in three shipping containers to Port Hedland. Having rented houses for east coast workers scrambling west as borders closed, FMG now needed to make them homes.

As the Victorian and NSW premiers pushed for hard shut-downs, west coast miners roared into action. They warned that 250,000 mining jobs were at risk. Royalty income and company taxes would collapse. They booked out resorts for quarantined workers, transformed rosters to minimise staff movements, grabbed laboratory technicians and pathologists to create their own test facilities and moved heaven and earth to keep the mines going. They even shopped at Ikea.