By John W. Miller, Wall Street Journal, November 16, 2011

MANDURAH, Australia—One of the fastest-growing costs in the global mining industry are workers like James Dinnison: the 25-year-old high-school dropout from Western Australia makes $200,000 a year running drills in underground mines to extract gold and other minerals.....

....Mr. Dinnison proudly calls himself a Cub—a Cashed-up Bogan, a bogan referring to Australian slang for an uneducated blue-collar worker. Books and documentaries are coming out about this group, exploring the country's unease with the thought that conspicuous consumption by undereducated people is what is helping to keep the country afloat.

"I have civil-servant friends who talk about giving it all up and going to the work in the mines," says David Nichols, author of "The Bogan Delusion", a sociological book about the riches of blue-collar Australians. Jules Duncan, who filmed a short documentary called "Cashed-Up Bogans" that he is hoping to turn into a feature, admits jealousy prompted his curiosity. "But I've come to respect these people who are just doing what I'd be doing if I wasn't a self-indulgent filmmaker," he says.....