Nicola Forrest, the woman with $20b to give away

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Nicola Forrest is leaning out of a helicopter armed with a shotgun. Somewhere on the ground below her husband, Andrew, is racing about in a 4WD buggy. Bang! She scores a direct hit on the rump of a beast with a mind of its own.

It is only a rubber slug, so no harm done and more gentle on the thick hide than a nudge from a bull buggy or the stockwhip. The ageing bull ruefully starts out of the trees to join the rest of the herd.

It's a drab spring day in Perth as Forrest relates this story across a table at Nobu, the upmarket Japanese restaurant at the Crown casino. We're here ostensibly to talk about the family company's recent venture that aims to turn the WA coast into an aquaculture powerhouse and her work at the Minderoo Foundation, the Forrest family's philanthropic operation. That oysters from the Albany-based aquaculture project are now served at Nobu is no coincidence.

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Forrest once did a stint as a private cook for Lady Susan Renouf, living in an apartment behind her Point Piper mansion. Trevor Collens

Just as interesting though is what makes Nicola Forrest tick. What drives this woman who will play a big role in deciding how to give away most of an iron ore fortune now worth about $20 billion, but who until recently has been firmly in the shadow of her larger-than-life husband, "Twiggy"?

And it's this that has led the conversation to happy times at the family’s happy place. For Forrest, that means mustering cattle in the sunshine and red dust on Minderoo Station, long the Forrest-family home about 1300 kilometres north of Nobu in Western Australia’s iron ore-rich Pilbara.

As she gets into the story, it's clear that at 59 she's never really grown out of her rural roots and is perfectly happy about it. It is also clear that the mother of Walk Free co-founder Grace, 27, actress Sophia, 25, and student Sydney, 20, is far more than "just" the woman beside Australia's richest man.

“The kids tease me but I love [riding shotgun]," she says. "I feel like Annie Oakley up in the helicopter. I’ve always had a sharp eye.”

She says she needs time on the cattle station and loves "putting on my hat and boots and the smell of the horse" more than "Chanel No.5".

Nicola Maurice grew up on a farm in “beautiful country” between Mudgee and Dubbo in central western NSW. The family raised sheep, Hereford cattle and grew wheat. The farm remains in family hands, run by one of her uncles.