Whitewater Creek Map

Monday, 30 March 2020

Over the past few months I've been working on an orienteering map of our suburb. This has involved lots of desk work - using arial photos and LIDAR information, as well as the standard orienteering software package called OCAD.  OCAD isn't that straight forward but luckily I had heaps of help getting started from Rob, both while he was out here and also via skype once he returned to Japan. I feel pretty confident with OCAD now which is good.

Of  course I have had to combine the desk work with trips outside to do field work. This is where I am less confident so I always combine my pencil scrawls with heaps of photos so I can draw it all up properly when I get back.

Now I am at the point where the map is nearly done - I just need to do some final checks. I've made it so that it can be a 1:5000 map of the entire suburb, or a 1:3000 map of the creek area for a shorter sprint event - each of them just fit onto an A4 piece of paper.

Now of course it's not like I can organise an orienteering event at the moment, so my plan is to set some courses then make the maps available to the local orienteering community so people can have a go while they are out getting their allowed exercise.   

It's been a fun and satisfying experience. The computer part is not too different to animating really - it's not difficult, just time consuming - so I've enjoyed working and half-watching netflix at the same time (you have to pick the netflix series so it's not something with a complicated plot).