If you check back in the newspapers of the late 90s, I don't...

If you check back in the newspapers of the late 90s, I don't think you will find Union Resources listed with a share price of $180. That said, the shareholder wealth destruction that you describe from $180 to 0.26c a share REALLY HAS OCCURRED. The $180 price a share would arise if you calculate backwards from today's share price allowing for all the share consolidations.

Is the past shareholder wealth destruction something to worry about going forward with a record like that?

Yes and no, IMO. No, in that we have different directors now and no in that a lot of factors that affected the share price in the past were outside the directors' control (and yes, many of those sorts of risk still are outside the director's control. Many of the risks were linked so when one went bad, several others did simultaneously usually causing a 90% loss only for a share consolidation to take place to allow the same sort of thing to repeat.

Yes, in the sense I am starting to worry about our directors:
1. I don't like directors who play fast a loose with past historic shareholder wealth: while there is some talk from respected posters that MAK inflated its share price (I believe them) prior to the bid for UCL, it appears UCL are doing an opposite kind of trick: cheapening future finance costs for Sandpiper by giving away understated value in our Iranian zinc mine (the directors value it at $1m in the latest presentation), Matthew Trivett (a Paterson's investment analyst) values it at zero, and I at $36m (a lot of people will laugh at that figure - I don't care). I believe it is on the B/S at zero.
2. Consolidations and company name changes should never occur without a good reason. We have not had a good reason. Yes, they all say that stuff about improving marketability and all that, but that is garbage, IMO.

On the other hand, I sincerely believe (as do many respected posters) that our Board will do a much better job of getting Sandpiper into production. Can you still lose 90% of your money getting Sandpiper into production? Yes, if the dredging arm snaps off when we are laden with debt: the project can be grabbed off us by a rescue placing at a rock bottom price to stop the banks seizing the project (imagine if we have sold phosphate forward and can't deliver it and we are in a raging phosphate bull market? - We'd be forced to buy the stuff in). The corollary of that is you can theoretically have a 10 bagger if it all derisks as we all hope. With the latest move to takeover MAK however, I detect an attempt to reduce the potential future share price gains to cheapen the finance for Wonarah (if we take over MAK we will probably become a boring two bagger over the next 2 years?). Should you take up the offer? I can't answer that. It depends perhaps whether you think you are getting value for Wonarah or not and how much you like or dislike your Board perhaps. I am probably one of the most negative posters on the matter of our Board. All the best.