Virtual reality is a promising environment for future mine design, planning and monitoring. One of the major challenges in the development of future practical Virtual Mine is the safe, detailed and efficient data acquisition and automatic reconstruction of the object (either underground mine or open pit). The approach proposed by the authors is the utilisation of close-range digital terrestrial photogrammetric technology. This paper gives a brief description of the methods, techniques and procedures developed specifically for the reconstruction and simulation of complete 3D open pits. An important conclusion drawn from this research is that complete mine open pits can be reconstructed accurately and efficiently by using the close-range digital terrestrial photogrammetric techniques developed by CSIRO Exploration and Mining. The case study on the Eureka pit in Western Australia demonstrates that the close-range digital terrestrial photogrammetry approach has clear advantages over conventional surveying methods in the level of texture detail, accuracy, efficiency and operating costs. The image matching techniques, specifically developed for the reconstruction of complete 3D open pits, have proved to be effective tools for automatic matching of stereo images with large distortions. The mosaicking techniques, specifically developed in this research have proved to be powerful tools in handling special objects such as open pits, pillars and tunnels. In addition, the field procedures developed are important to the data acquisition and subsequent image processing of complete open pits.