My fellow hub members, there are not many of us left these days. Long gone are the perma-bulls like Sitting Bull who once calculated the chances of a Kimber buyout in to 2 decimal places. I still hold shares in Kimber because I believe in the asset and the location, and to the intentions of the board of directors. What I have not been happy with, is the execution of the master plan.

In 2006 Jim Puplava managed to get rid of the existing management and board of directors. His vision was to prove up as many ounces of gold in the ground, rather than taking Monterde into production at that time. A great idea in theory, but the execution has been appaulingly bad. Back in 2006 we had approx 2 million oz of gold and 45 million shares. In 2012, we still have 2 million oz of gold (officially), and approx 90 million shares. Yes, yes, I know, there is 50,000m of drill results due out any minute now. It has been due since April and they keep missing their target, promising a new date and missing it again. Along the way we have had chief geologist Marius Mare "resign". I can only guess, as management will never admit anything, but I guess he was asked to resign after missing the original deadline for the resource estimate. James T Curry has also come and gone probably on the back of failed promises to deliver. I have always thought that we have a talented board of directors lead by Puplava, but the people charged with dotting the i's and crossing the t's have let us down, especially on the geological front. Has there been a big mistake in the geological calculations that has forced a lot of rework, taking more time? It seems impossible to find out. Coming from New Zealand, where you can´t really sue anyone it is difficult to understand a culture where sueing is commonplace. Any attempts I have made to find out what has happended at Kimber have been met with informational brick walls - it seems everyone is too scared to say anything in case they get sued.

So why has the resource estimate been delayed? I can only guess. Up until recently, we were relying on external consultants to do a lot of the work. It is my belief that our CEOs background in finance and not engineering or geology has let us down here. He is probably used to being able to purchase things for x dollars and having them delivered on y date without any further questions asked. But coming from an engineering background myself it does not work that way. A resource estimate is not rocket science. It has been done thousands of times before. All the steps in the process are well known. Part of what I think went wrong has been the lack of good management and oversight of the engineering and geological process. Every project that is delivered on time will have a clearly defined schedule. A schedule being a timetable of what will happen, when it will happen, in what order, what events must preceed other events, and who will do it. An good engineering manager knows that importance of a clearly defined project schedule. It gives you the ability to to say hey!!! if that set of drawings is not finished this week, then the project delivery date 6 months down the track will not be met, so you jokers better work the weekend to make up the time. I wonder if Kimber management had a clearly defind schedule for the resource estimate. Or did they just purchase one and hope it would be delivered on time without any weekly checks? And did thier contract have any teeth. If things got off track with the consultants what legal leverage did they have? any or none - like you´ll just have to wait until we finish that other job and there is bugger all you can do about it. I will never know, but I wonder. But in my experience I have only seen projects delivered on time with a clearly defined schedule, with oversight and tight contracts.

So now we have a new VP of exploration and another guy doing the project management for the development of Monterde. Good. I just hope they know what they are doing and I really hope we don´t see them "resign" in a few months. All these staff changes do not give the market much confidence.

Speaking of confidence, nice to see that Sprott has enough of it to give Kimber a bridging loan. In this regard, Kimber management has always done well with the management of financing. On the Sprott lending website they say they typically lend for 12-18 months with the company´s assets as security. So I guess that means sometime in the next 18 months something big has to happen, otherwise we default on the loan and Sprott takes over the assets of the company. I wonder what the big thing will be. I suppose the company wants to get their resource estimate finished, maybe another economic study, maybe a production decision and hope for a better share price to do another financing.

There is always chatter on the internet about Kimber being a buyout target. And I am sure management would welcome this, but nowhere near the current share price. I firmly believe that with Puplave and co on the board of directors they believe in higher gold prices and will not let the company go without getting a good price for it. It seems they would rather take the risk of going into production themselves than sell the resource for a cheap price. Kimber seems to be held tightly enough that I don´t think another company could mount a hostile takeover without driving up the price substantially. We are at rock bottom price now because everyone who wanted to buy is already in and there are no new buyers until Kimber can show that market some real results.

Having missed the deadline for release of the resource estimate, it seems management is in no hurry to just do a rough job for the sake of getting it done quickly. While it is very frustrating for shareholders, it seems the big guys behind Kimber are prepared to wait until things are done properly rather than rush through something of poor quality. Thats great for those with deep pockets and a long term vision, but there are plenty of us smaller shareholders who would like the payoff to come sooner rather than later.

Still, it's out of my hands. I keep watching and waiting, believing in the asset, and continue to be disappointed by the delays.

Golden Kiwi