Australia’s minerals industry is booming.

But Dan Denning in The Daily Reckoning Australia sees two threats on the horizon that could derail Australia’s commodities boom. One possibility is that Australia’s boom will end where America’s depression begins. The other, more likely, scenario is an inflationary melt up.

The extent of the boom was underlined yesterday by an Australian government report predicting export earnings from commodities would rise a whopping 40% $201bn in the financial year to June 2009, led by a 48% surge in mineral exports to A$178bn — the biggest rise in four decades.

Are you getting dizzy yet trying to keep track of all the takeover activity in the Aussie market? From the big fish to the little fish, all of fishes in Australia’s resource ocean are on the Chinese menu.