Ben Harvey: ‘You didn’t ask me but...’ my climb up Bluff Knoll and the frenemies at Woodside and BHP

I climbed Bluff Knoll last weekend. I say climb, but it’s really a walk. A walk that was much longer and much, much harder than I anticipated.

For those of you who haven’t gone through this West Australian 1099m rite of passage, let me give you one bit of advice: pack the Dencorub.

I am writing this a week after the ascent (God, that makes it sounds like I summited Everest) and my calves are still wrecked.

I was making so much huffing and puffing I could tell that people coming down the hill expected to come face to face with a freight train when they rounded the corner.

SEE BEN HARVEY’S UP LATE RANT IN THE PLAYER ABOVE

We stayed at the Premier Mill at Katanning the night before and after. They charge like wounded bulls but, my gosh, it’s pretty flash.

(Mental note: ask accountant whether that sentence justifies tax deduction for cost of trip.)

If you do go to the Stirling Range, make sure you stop at the Riverside Roadhouse by the Bannister River. They know how to do a good pie.

They had labelled mine steak and cheese but they missed the third ingredient, which from the internal temperature was clearly magma.

Oh, and one more thing...

A couple of years ago, relations between two of the big cats of WA business — Woodside and BHP — were so bad their respective bosses hung up on each other during a telephone conversation.

Woodside’s former chief, Peter Coleman, had a screaming match with BHP’s former boss, Andrew Mackenzie.

The spin teams from each company said the cause of the “robust discussion” was a “divergence of opinion” concerning what to do with some gas assets in the Pilbara in which the two companies had interests.

Fast forward to last week and BHP was selling its petroleum business to its one-time frenemy. Woodside will be a $40 billion company and a player on the world stage.

It’s well behind the so-called oil “supermajors” (BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and Total). And still small compared with government-owned Saudi Aramcoand PetroChina.

But still not bad for a company from little old Perth.