I had a quick look at distances involved to 3 of the main REE...

I had a quick look at distances involved to 3 of the main REE extraction/concentrating/production sites currently in existence or being developed in Australia.

The winners are:

Lynas
Location: Mt Weld and soon to be Kalgoorlie
Distance by truck from Gascoyne 15 hours 30 min
Closest end port : Fremantle

Arafura
Location : Nolans Bore, 135 km from Alice Springs
Distance by truck from Gascoyne 32 hours
Closest end port : Darwin

Hastings
Location : Gascoyne (with concentration occurring at Onslow, 2 trucks a day between hastings and Onslow)
Distance by truck : might get to 5th gear..
Closest end port : potentially Fremantle

as you can see, the most economical in regards to transport costs would be Hastings infrastructure. That or whichever entity takes on future production at DRE of REE would have to develop their own extraction/concentrating facilities, which do not come cheap. Plus as Lynas is now finding, water potentially is a big issue.

I still think that a future hub and spoke approach would work best and be the most economical.

food for thought, just some musing.