Why I'm Here (And What I'm Building)
An introduction to what this newsletter is about, and why now.
I’m a geologist by training, and like most geologists, I spent years doing desktop research the hard way.
Tabbing between DMPE (the 100th rebrand, previously DMIRS), WAMEX, Geoview, and a stack of ASX announcements. Cross-referencing tenure maps that were days behind reality. Digging through A-files trying to figure out whether a geochem anomaly was real or a unit error from 1987. Manually piecing together a picture that should take minutes and instead took hours.
I started building NextMaps to solve that problem, first for myself, then for anyone working in WA exploration.
Today NextMaps is a live platform: real-time tenement change tracking, historical geochem across 10+ million surface samples and 2.5 million drillholes, GSWA geological layers, heritage and land access overlays, automated datapack reports, a tenement marketplace, and an alert system that tells you when ground moves before the DMIRS WFS catches up.
It’s been a genuine full-circle moment. The same workflows that frustrated me as a geologist are the ones the platform is designed to eliminate.
So what is this newsletter?
This is where I think out loud about WA exploration, the data, the deals, the ground movements, and the industry dynamics that rarely make it into an ASX announcement.
Each week (or close to it), expect a mix of:
Tenement watch: interesting ground movements, surrenders, and applications I’m tracking through NextMaps, with real examples from the data
Data deep-dives: what the historical exploration record actually says about a project, a commodity, or a region
Industry observations: on capital allocation, exploration trends, and the mechanics of how WA tenure works in practice
Platform updates": new features, new data layers, and what drove the build decisions behind them
This isn’t a tips newsletter or a “how to be a geologist” newsletter. It’s closer to a field notebook made public, the stuff I find genuinely interesting as someone who spends a lot of time watching how ground moves and what the data says about where value might be hiding.
The WA exploration scene moves fast. Ground gets dropped and picked up within hours. Compulsory surrenders release thousands of hectares with a published date that most people miss. Historical drilling sits in WAMEX for decades before someone connects the right dots. Real-time visibility and clean data matter more than ever when capital is selective and the discovery cycle is compressed.
That’s the lens I’m writing from.
Who is this for?
If you work in WA exploration, as a geologist, prospector, exploration manager, or capital markets professional covering the sector, this is written for you.
If you’re an investor trying to understand what junior explorers are actually doing on the ground, this might be useful context.
If you’re just curious about how the sausage gets made in one of the world’s most active mineral exploration jurisdictions, welcome.
A place to start
NextMaps is free to access until at least 1 July 2026, no credit card required. If you want to see what I’m talking about in practice, head to nextmaps.com.au and have a look around.
And if you find this newsletter useful, the best thing you can do is share it with someone in the industry who’d get something out of it.
More soon.
— Owen Hackenberg
Geologist, GIS Wiz, Founder, NextMaps.