The GPS and Charts
GPS and charts. Global Position Satellite system. From the beginning most people recommended the Garmin over the others. About a year ago we also had a public lecture on how the system worked and a big link is a station at Mount Stromlo, the Astronomy Department of the ANU, which uses argon ion lasers for satellite distance determination, a quite impressive light show of an evening with the lasers hunting the satellites and then locking on. The other component is very accurate time keeping and with these two the couple of dozen satellites can give latitude and longitude to under 5 metres along with altitude but less accurately. Early this year, Clinton ordered the Americal DoD to reduce the inaccuracy of the system by a factor of ten so now anyone can have a pot shot a Gadafi's family of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. We got an eTREX as it was the cheapest and had a serial output allowing downloads. Although it was not clearly mentioned in the manual, there were only 1500 points in the track log, ie. about 12.5 hours of info which needed to be downloaded every two days roughly as the eTREX makes a point every 30 seconds and averages out movement on a faster time scale. The system cost $US120 and about 3 times that in OZ and is really quit fun to use 'though only an ijut would get lost on a river.
Maps. Chris Bellamy suggested finding the 1:20,000 maps put out by the Department of Lands and Water Conservation which proved a challenge to find. They actually live in Wagga and are printing no more maps so we ordered 10 of the last 20 existing. We will try to put these on the web for future adventurers. They were really useful and were constructed from other maps during the heyday of Lands and Water after the construction of the Hay weir in 1982/ They show reserves with many apparent amenities, sadly most of which are now defunct, a sign of the times I am afraid as we move into user pays philosophy. We alos bought the AUSLIC 1:100,000 maps for the Murrumbidgee/Murray system at $6 a pop making about $180 total except the Balranald section which was 1:250,000, apparently the army is not interested in the outback (along with everyone else). The Murray River Charts is also a useful buy and it covers the Murray to Renmark downstream. After that, the Murray River Pilot can be used as both have much information of snags, rocks etc along with interesting tidbits about the riverine history. Real Soon Now there will be CD ROMs with raster maps of the river system, but not now baby. Garmin may even have them soon although the blinding interest in navigating these two rivers may not have extended to the USA.