If you wanted to use your agriculture background, Rio and BHP both operate large farming projects on the land they (i) own but haven't mined, or (ii) already mined and rehabilitated. See for example from last week:
(If you don't have a subscription to the Australian, just copy and paste the headline into google, search for it and click the link - you get about 10 free reads via google referal per month)
"For decades Rio Iron Ore has run cattle on six pastoral stations in the Pilbara: Karratha, Hamersley, Rocklea, Juna, Yalleen and Yarraloola, covering 1,500,000ha. Of the company's 25,000 head of cattle, 80 per cent are presently sold to the domestic market and 20 per cent to Indonesia and the Middle East.
Rio has held the pastoral leases to allow access to a range of mining tenements, but it wants to use the tens of millions of litres of water below the ground at its nearby mines to irrigate the land...
Rival miners BHP Billiton and Fortescue Metals Group also have pastoral stations in the Pilbara region, notably BHP's giant Marillana station, although Mr Jackson said there had been no discussion about the project between the miners so far."
Looks like they might be gearing up for something big soon, but I'm not sure if you'll get the mining wages you were probably after working on these agricultural projects.
