There’s no love lost at the top of the Rich List. Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest, both in their 60s, have more in common than they’d like to admit. But they don’t see eye to eye on many levels, most notably the future of fossil fuels in Australia.

The Fortescue Metals Group founder couldn’t help but show his disdain this month, when he celebrated the start of production at the company’s $US3.9 billion Iron Bridge magnetite mine. Asked about the prospect of Rinehart moving into magnetite, Forrest lifted the lid on a rivalry that bubbles and spits like a pot of kangaroo tail soup on a wood fire – a dish that would have been familiar to their families in the early days of European settlement of Western Australia.