Friday 26 June 2009

Woman in a mine’s world

Not many people think turning 40 is good news. But for Ines Scotland it was cause for celebration. Hitting the Big Four-O made it easier for her to get permission to enter Saudi Arabia for business. “I immediately applied for my multiple-entry visa,” she says, laughing. “It seems you’re considered ‘no longer desirable’, and I thought, well, OK, it doesn’t bother me.”

Ms Scotland is chief executive of Citadel Resources Group, a Melbourne mining company that is in partnership with the Saudi government to explore the kingdom’s newly opened mines; ones largely untouched since, it is said, the time of King Solomon.

Soft-spoken and just over five feet (1.5 metres) tall, in a pinstriped suit and black patent leather peep-toe heels, Ms Scotland seems an unlikely corporate conquistador. Then again, she bears a dossier marked by the unexpected: woman; miner; a beautiful baby contest winner who now wears steel-toed boots, searching the Arabian peninsula for copper and gold.

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