How mining and musical theatre led Paul Bloxham to HSBC
HSBC chief economist Paul Bloxham spent his childhood in Port Hedland, taking singing lessons and dreaming of a life on stage.
“I have red dust in my veins,” Paul Bloxham tells Capital Brief as he recounts his childhood and path into economics.
His father worked in air traffic control for the government, which meant the Bloxham family was regularly on the move around Western Australia. The family shifted between small towns along the coast. And, for several years during his childhood, this specifically led to a stint living in the country’s largest mining town — Port Hedland.
Port Hedland is in the Pilbara and the port was opened in 1896. Now, it is the driver of one in every 12 jobs in WA and generates more than half of Australia’s resource exports. It contributes more to the nation's GDP than might be expected for a town of 16,000 people.
This first hand experience of the nation’s biggest export industry and the people who work within it has been especially useful for Bloxham. He has a dual role at HSBC as chief economist for both Australia and New Zealand as well as covering global commodities. He meets regularly with international clients, whose understanding of the Australian mining sector can vary. And being able to tell them tales of his younger years, surrounded by the red dusts produced from iron ore mining, helps provide a new level of understanding for an often foreign concept.
