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Bushfire Closures

To help with Easter 2019 trip planning, we’ve taken the map produced by Parks on 9 April, then calibrated and converted it for use in OziExplorer. It’s available in JPG and OZF formats with .map files.

DOWLOAD FROM HERE

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Version 8 Complete

Version 8.1 is now complete and published in all formats, incorporating corrections of those few niggling errors from 8.0.

All data is refreshed, plus new layers in this version include:

  • Last Logged [year]
  • Old Growth forest
  • Wetlands
  • Fire towers and radio repeaters
  • Water Points
  • Historical sites
  • Master Contours

Download JPG, GeoTIFF and OZF at The Map Table or visit the Avenza Store.

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Version 8 Rolling Out

It’s been 6 months since V7 maps were sent out into the world.

With over half a million maps downloaded, it seems like some people found them handy. The snow season saw huge numbers of people pulling maps of ski resort areas, hopefully helping them get home safely.

In V8 all existing data has been refreshed, so that’s roads, tracks, park boundaries and OSM roads so you still have that second source for track data out where government employees with power to correct map data fear to tread.

New in Version 8

  • Freeways and Highways look different to other roads so they stand out
  • Last Burned layer so you can manage your expectations about that great campsite you remember from 1997 (eg “Bushfire 2003”)
  • Last Logged Year (eg “LL:2017”) for much the same reason as above. Nothing like rocking up to that nice spot beside the creek to find the area looking like Tunguska in 1909
  • Wetland layer to find the swampy bits
  • Historical landmarks with labels – some new places to explore
  • Transmission lines, because they’re a visible landmark
  • Old Growth overlay (“OG”) if you’re looking for real trees instead of modern reproductions
  • Tweaks to POIs, including waterfalls, caves, picnic tables and shelters, fire towers, radio repeaters, ruins, water points, tanks, quarries (some of them make reasonable emergency fire refuges) and other bits and pieces
  • Masterlines for the contours; every 100m the contour lines are thicker than normal ones.
  • 1:100k version, with some features removed for clarity, including most of the contour lines – masterlines only. Some other features also removed to make a cleaner map to suit the scale. Good for route planning through the shrubbery as all tracks are still there, terrible for built up areas or places with too many tracks and features.

Timetable

100k set is done (JPG), which will be followed by the GeoTIFF conversion, then Ozi. Then we move to 25k. Last we upload everything to Avenza. Give it a week to 10 days to get everything where it needs to be, so expect it all available before Easter for those heading out for the long weekend.

Index file will be refreshed and will include the map key which somehow got lost on V7.

As usual, the download info is over at The Map Table.

Corrections

There will be errors. The 100k set will have teething problems for sure. I’m not sure that it likes coastlines … the index looks like a dog’s breakfast down south, but we’ll see how we go.

Seasonal closures don’t get announced until May, and then we’ll request the shapefile so we can do a V8.1 refresh to incorporate the new data and replace the old.

Donations

A massive thank you to everyone who threw us a dollar or three!

We’ve paid for the hosting and bandwidth for 2018 so I’m no longer getting looks from my wife about spending her money on top of the hundreds of hours to get this project started.

If you like the maps and want to support 2019’s costs or just want to buy us a beer, the donation info is here.