For the first time in more than two decades, a Packer is not Australia’s richest man. That mantle rests on the bullish shoulders of Andrew Forrest, a former stockbroker who, in five years, has transformed a promise to turn rust-red iron ore into gold for investors into a personal fortune that would make even Alan Bond blush.

A little over a year ago the former “penny stock” mining entrepreneur, known as “Twiggy” in business circles, could not scrape in among the ten richest Australians. His 36 per cent share of Fortescue Metals Group was worth A$1.7 billion (£800 million) then; two years ago it was worth the relative loose change of A$400 million.

Now he sits on top of a mountainous paper fortune of A$6.7 billion as the embodiment of the Zeitgeist in the booming Australian resources sector. James Packer, the gaming tycoon and a friend, is relegated to No 2.

It is a world away from his youth, when he worked as a jackeroo on the family pastoral property at Minderoo, more than 1,400 km (870 miles) north of Perth.

But minerals are in his blood. Lord Forrest, his great-great-uncle, was Western Australia’s first premier and backed the state’s first big minerals boom by borrowing six times the budget to run the world’s longest water pipeline into its rich goldfields.

Mr Forrest, 47, who overcame a stutter as a child, has won a reputation in his own right for grand development schemes and his ability to attract investors, although his previous big venture ended in tears for many investors.

The former stockbroker became known as “Silver Tongue” in the mid1990s after convincing a group of American bondholders to put up $420 million in debt funding for a greenfields nickel project using rejigged Cuban technology. The bondholders walked away with 26 cents on the dollar, while Anglo American, the world’s second-biggest miner, fared even worse, cut adrift with 7 per cent of its $200 million investment.

But he has charmed investors again, sprinkling iron ore dust over the US investment managers Harbinger Capital and Leucadia National, which have taken 15.6 per cent and 9.9 per cent of the company respectively. Yet another convert is Viktor Rashnikov, the Russian billionaire whose Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works took a 5.2 per cent stake last September.

Those who know him say that although Mr Forrest borders on evangelical about the project, he remains grounded and periodically will “grab his swag and camp out under the stars for a night or two”.

“Forrest is the quintessential Aussie bloke, just as happy to say g’day to the garbage man as the prime minister,” Tim Treadgold, a mining commentator in Perth, said. “He just happens to be the richest Aussie bloke.”

But Mr Forrest has said that he would rather give away his billions than die rich and is loath to “burden” his three children with his fortune.

“What all my kids know is that they’re not going to inherit it and they’re happy about that,” Mr Forrest said last year.

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