The final pieces of equipment are the cable to connect the GPS to the computer and a cradle to hold the GPS in view of the driver (Figure 1).
Geoscience Australia National Mapping Information Group announced that the next version of the Mosaic map of Australia is in development and due to be released early in 2007. Entitled NATMAP Digital Maps 2007, this version will have updated maps and will be supplied as a twin DVD ROM product only. They advise to watch out for "NATMAP Digital Maps 2007" in better map shops or the release announcement on Geoscience Australia's Web site: http://www.ga.gov.au/ .

Preparing Your GPS

The detail that I am about to describe can be done directly in the GPS but it is cumbersome and I do not use that method. I must include some technical information here to make this article understandable to those not familiar with a GPS. To navigate from point A to point B then to point C one creates waypoints for A, B and C.

A waypoint is created in OziExplorer by first loading the map that is to be used for navigation, click on the waypoint tool which changes the cursor to a small circle with crosshairs, then click at your start point on the map. This creates waypoint 1 for the first waypoint. You then access the properties for the waypoint and give it a recognisable name. My previous Garmin GPS had a restriction of 8 letters for the waypoint name thus the location "Cabbage Tree" in Gippsland was abbreviated to "CABBGTRE". The best recognisable effect is achieved by dropping some or all of the vowels. Many abbreviations are quite unrecognisable so there is a description field where one enters a description of the location and when this information has been transferred into the GPS you can highlight the waypoint and access the description. My present GPS has a restriction of ten characters for the waypoint name and most names are readily recognisable. Waypoint locations can be towns, rest areas, intersections, cheap fuel locations or whatever takes your fancy.

Now that the waypoints have been created on the map we turn our attention to creating a route. In OziExplorer we open the route manager, select properties and give the route a title eg. "HOME-HALLS GAP". The GPS and program force uppercase titles. Following this, install the waypoints in turn into the route. The next stage is to transfer your waypoints and routes from the computer to the GPS.

Extending Waypoint and Route Capacity

There is a limit in the number of waypoints and routes that the GPS can hold so I extend this by storing the waypoints and routes by state and Territory. The Australian Capital Territory is included with New South Wales. State boundaries are not strictly adhered to because if I want to complete a trip over the border then at my night stop I clear the information from the GPS and transfer from the computer to the GPS the waypoints and routes for the new state or territory unless I am returning to whence I came.

Example: Waypoints are stored in Victoria.wpt and New South Wales.wpt. Routes are stored in Victoria.rte and New South Wales.rte.
All of the waypoint and route files are stored in the Data folder of OziExplorer so this folder is included with my backup procedure.

Making Notes

In OziExplorer one can make notes on the map. Often a gem of information crops up in a travel magazine or it is obtained by word of mouth. I transfer this information into a note on the map and long after I have forgotten the information I may be planning a trip and the note jumps out to me.

The note information is stored in small map files which are associated with the main maps. For example: "250k.ecw" is a 702,244 KB file and it is the 1:250 000 mosaic map of Australia. The map file associated with it is "Natmap 250k Mosaic.map" and this starts off as a 4 KB map file and grows in size as notes are added. The latter file and other like map files are included in my backup procedure.

Benefits of Using a GPS

I am a solo traveller so it is both illegal and dangerous to try to read a map while driving. Instead, my GPS gives me much more information than I could reasonably request of a passenger. For instance, if a break is called for I can look at the page with the list of waypoints in my route and highlight the approaching waypoints. This will give me the approximate distance to the waypoint and estimated time of arrival. Remember that my GPS is working with line of sight between waypoints so if one is on a winding road and/or varying speed on hills, there will be a degree of inaccuracy but there is sufficient information for my purpose.

If I am curious about the distance from my location to a town or to the nights likely campsite along the route I follow the same procedure as above.

In August 2003 I was travelling north along the Cobb Highway (read dirt road) about 100 km south of Wilcannia, NSW when I decided that it was time to camp for the night so I drove off the road and travelled about one kilometre into the paddock. Fortunately I turned my outfit around to face the track that I made coming in as a preparation for departure in the morning. Around midnight I was woken by the distinctive noise of large raindrops landing on the roof of my caravan. I looked outside and the moonlit sky that was studded with bright stars a few hours earlier had changed to total darkness. Now, that soil was quite OK to drive on when dry but I know that once wet, its texture takes on the consistency of bread dough and this was not the place to be. I quickly threw on some clothes, locked everything down, strapped the TV to the bed and moved out of there. Driving into this campsite in daylight was easy with vision enabling me to see ahead and navigate the fallen trees, washouts and around stands of bush, but now my vision was limited to the length of the headlight beam in the rain. It was essential that I followed my bent grass track back to the road and this worked fine till I came to a grassless clay pan. I got out with the torch and searched around for faint tread marks that led me to the continuation of the bent grass track. By the time I reached the road the rain had settled in and I travelled further north till I came to a Y intersection leading into a Station property. I parked on one leg of the Y and went back to bed.

The rain eased off by daylight and I proceeded north along the now greasy Cobb Highway. This is a pure dirt road without any gravel in it. A peculiarity when towing a caravan under these conditions is that if you try to travel too fast the caravan tends to leave the crown of the road and it wants to travel beside the car so I kept my pace to about 10 kph. An oncoming motorist from a local property advised me by UHF radio that they recorded 16 mm in their rain gauge this morning. The benefit of following a route with my GPS is that I knew during the remaining hours to the bitumen how far away it was.

Just before the bitumen I pulled off the road onto solid ground that is also used by road train drivers to check their truck loads and tyres etc, got my shovel out and dug the embedded clay from the wheel arches of the car and caravan. The clay was so friendly that it had to be cut with the shovel from the mud flaps of the car and caravan as well as the front of the van which was carrying its fair share of clay.

Finding Campsites

Gravel pits or gravel scrapes are an area where the surface soil is bulldozed into a perimeter and the exposed gravel is excavated for use as road metal. I find that these areas are under utilised campsites but they are difficult to locate if one is travelling above 60 kph. A trick that I use is
to have two routes planned for some roads, for instance, sections of the Gibb River Road in the Kimberley and the track from Burketown QLD to Borroloola NT and beyond are lined for long distances with impenetrable scrub so I look for gravel pits in which to setup camp. The first route that I plan is the normal route with waypoints which designate places of interest.