The following comments are based purely on observation. While writing a research report for Red5 (RED) I wondered if it was possible to see on Google Earth when the bund wall for the ~20Mt No 5 Tailings Pond had been built at RED’s 100% owned King of the Hills (KOTH) mine. Also, whether the wall failure that occurred in the KOTH north pit, which effectively closed the open-cut operations in 2004 could be seen (before and afterwards).

I knew there is that time bar in GE (Google Earth) that can be clicked on (on the top left) - what I didn't know was zooming out (and then back in to view) was that by clicking the arrow on the left of the time bar, it is possible to step back annually in time from 2005 to 1984 !! (yes Google Earth has apparently been annually recording us - apparently at 10am on New Years' Eve since 1984 - at least in Landsat etc).

Resolution is poor/low before 2005 - but it is possible to track the development of a mine over time, such as KOTH in the figure – and that bund wall for the No 5 tailings dam at KOTH was hence constructed between 2003 and 2004 (by SGW).

With such knowledge I have looked back at some other mine developments in WA and have noticed some things that possibly appear to have been forgotten – perhaps you can too, eg at the original oxide at Darlot. For daily detail of course there is still the free Sentinel app (https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/) which goes back to December 2015, should you want to view the progress of Dacian’s Jupiter pit, or other surface operations.

Disclosure and Disclaimer : This article has been written by Keith Goode, the Managing Director of Eagle Research Advisory Pty Ltd, (an independent research company) who is a Financial Services Representative with State One Stockbroking (AFSL 247100).

Figure. King of the Hills in Google Earth from 1984 to 2018e.