Unlocking the Secrets of Australia's Outback with the ExplorOz Traveller App

Ready to unlock the secrets of Australia's outback with your own four wheels? Buckle up for an enlightening journey as we dissect the intricacies of the ExplorOz Traveller App, a vital companion for every intrepid adventurer looking to quench their thirst for the Australian wilderness. Promising a wealth of information, from offline access to high-resolution EOTopo Maps of Australia to a library of nearly 200 Explorer's Treks and a database bursting with over 100,000 points of interest, this app is the key to transforming your travel experiences. Seasoned travellers and those planning their first outback journey will find a treasure trove of curated insights and tips from those who've trodden the path before you. 

Ever wished you could trace your route, save those magical moments, and share your tracks with fellow explorers? The ExplorOz Traveller App transcends the usual GPS functionality and brings a wealth of sharable, data-rich content to your fingertips. Learn how to create comprehensive track logs full of tantalising details about the history and wildlife of the areas you traverse, all gleaned from fellow travellers who've ventured to remote corners since 2006. This episode illuminates the power of this app, promising to revolutionise how you capture and share your adventures across Australia's diverse landscape. Prepare for a deep dive into the ExplorOz Traveller App - your ticket to an enriched travel experience.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:03

Hi. So in this episode we thought we would cover off a little bit about the Explorer Os Traveler app and the purpose of it, what it does, what its functions are. So we have touched on a few little comments in previous episodes. For those listeners that have heard those, oh my god, you've just got to have a look. What's happening right now. We have two Kegaroos look, they're not on set. Someone take a picture. They're really cool.

Speaker 2: 1:33

We'll get a photo of those for you at home when you're watching the listening to the blog and also I wish I could show listeners what we're sitting on right now, because this is a gorgeous big tree log. They can see it on the video, Okay this big tree log.

Speaker 1: 1:48

I love the seat cut into it. So, anyway, we thought we'd sit here today. The Explorer Os Traveler app was developed purely as a mechanism to enable anyone to have access to download the whole of Australia EO Topo Maps so that you can carry them with you in your back pocket, on your phone, on your tablet, for the whole of Australia and have high resolution offline maps. Obviously, it works offline if you've got the maps downloaded, and it works offline to show your location on the map because you use a device like a phone that has a built-in GPS. There are a couple of devices for which you need to actually get an external GPS, things like Wi-Fi only iPads and laptops, but the app will work on all those devices. So it's as simple as having the GPS enabled device and downloading the offline maps, and you're right to go. One, download it and it's all there. You don't have to do any of this, selecting a portion of the map and then only having yourself restricted to that portion of the map while you're offline. You've got access to the whole of Australia. So those functions are what's built into the Explorer's Traveler app. On top of that, all the content that we've been curating over the last, you know, 20 years on the website. These are the Explorer's Treks, of which there's almost 200 of those, and the 100,000 POI database, which we call Explorer's Places. All that content is delivered free in the downloadables.

Speaker 1: 3:15

When you first set up the app and obviously, when you get an app, you're online, you're downloading the app through the app store and at the same time, when you open the app, you're online and you're creating your account, you're logging in and you do your downloads at that point. At that point, you can then go offline and the Explorer's Traveler app is designed that you can do all your looking at the map, looking where you are on the map, looking at what's around you on the map with those places, and having access to pre-planned navigation routes, which are Explorer's Treks. All offline, nothing more to do. But on top of that, there's even more features. And, look, the app has actually become very complex and data-rich because it's been used now for over seven years by really hardcore outback travelers, people that really are very enthusiastic about four-wheel drive travels. These are people that are regularly going out solo into the deserts and doing K-Piawk and the Kimberley and all the destinations that people want to go, and they are contributing back into it. So some of this information from these people was being put into our content. Even before we had the app available for people to use, they were using the facilities online on our website. So some of the content that you get in the app actually contains historical information that dates all the way back to around about 2006.

Speaker 1: 4:43

I've been noticing some place comments so we've got some enthusiastic travelers that have been to some remote places, such as in the Root or River National Park, talking about some really hardcore tracks that are very difficult to navigate and looking at different soaks and springs, aboriginal engravings and petroglyphs that they're found along the way that a lot of people don't know about and that don't exist. If you just are using our app and you're offline and you find yourself in a situation you can just look around you when you've got the app in front of you and it will show you these points of interest without you having made a pre-concerted plan to actually go and research that yourself. And when you're offline, this information is all interactive. It has photos, it has comments, it's got all the updates. You know exactly what date the comment and the review for the place was put in and those updates are very visible.

Speaker 1: 5:43

Something we do quite differently to some of the other popular travel apps out there about this destination content that you see with these place markers on the map, is that we don't use generic statements to say this is a rest area, blah, blah, blah. We'll actually hand curate that information specific to that site. So it's Just because it is a rest area doesn't mean it has a generic statement, and then you've got to go and read the reviews to find out what's unique about this spot compared to another spot that's a rest area. In our app we'll actually give you hand curated information so it might tell you oh, there's a memorial plaque to you know air over there and you can go and have a read about it. It'll also tell you all the unique features, such as what wildlife might come, any of the historical information about early explorers that may have passed through there, and there's a lot of that information in the places, just for the geography points of interest.

Speaker 1: 6:39

A lot of Australia's mountains a lot of people don't realise have so much history behind them and that's something that we really want to bring alive for the people that use our app, because when you travel, it's just not about getting to the destination, setting up camp and saying, woohoo, I've got here. Sure, okay, I understand. But for a lot of people that become really involved in the traveling experience, it's more about well, how do I open my eyes and really embrace what I'm experiencing here? It's not just I've driven 500 kilometres today. It's what. What did you experience along the way, where you were, where you were traveling in the footsteps of some of our early pioneers? How can you understand the hardships of people that lived in those days? What's that shack over there?

Speaker 1: 7:26

You can actually go and tap an icon on our map. It'll tell you the history. So we've got certain icons that have a different symbol to describe what they are. So we have 74, I think, different POI types. One of them is historic site, for example, and so if you can see this brown circle with the letter H in it, that's a historic site. And you know, oh, if I tap that, I'm going to get some factual information which I might find interesting. Look, you may not. That may not be for you. You may be more interested in going. Oh, free camp, that's what I want to find out about. And so we have everything from free camps, paid camps, caravan parks, resorts, cabins, b&bs those type of things. We really don't focus so much on the the, the more resort style accommodation that's in your capital city. So I can tell you right now, if you're looking for hotels in in surface paradise- use another app.

Speaker 1: 8:22

That's not what we're about because there are other apps that provide that we're not trying to duplicate will be a mainstream tourism travel app. This really is. The explorers traveler app is for people that are prepared to explore and travel and be really wanting to discover off the mainstream, and that's what we're focused on in terms of the content delivery in the supplied explorers places.

Speaker 2: 8:48

I mean it comes from our.

Speaker 2: 8:49

It comes from our development, because in our previous discussions that we've had with you, you know we've been saying how we've born a lot of this based on our experience or what we've wanted or what we've needed, and one of the things that's very apparent, or it's certainly apparent to Michelle and I I don't know how many people do this, but we don't travel with an agenda when we go away.

Speaker 2: 9:12

We just go and we rely on our app exclusively to help us once we get out there. So you know, instead of spending weeks and months before we go meticulously planning everywhere we're going to be each day, we just want to go to a certain location and then find out everything that's in that area that we can possibly do, and then we just move up the highway or move up the road a little bit further and do the same thing again, and so it lends itself to having all of that content directly accessible in your hand everywhere, where you are, all the time, no matter where you are. Where it is in Australia, if it's, if it's decent and worth seeing. We hope you see it on our Explore Travel Ruff, and that was kind of the intent of how we've built all of that.

Speaker 1: 9:56

Whilst we're quite different to other people, that's because we're fortunate and we work for ourselves. I mean the reality of life for most people is they've only got four weeks annual leave. And these days we all know that advanced booking, even in a national park, even if it's a, you know, very basic bush camp, has to be booked ahead of time or you'll turn up and there's no site and that's really disappointing. And so I get, I fully get why a lot of people are in a different situation to us but I understand what Dave is trying to explain here.

Speaker 1: 10:25

It is such that, if your plans change, you've had a breakdown and, oh my god, the car's been put on the back of the truck and now you've got a higher car and you still want to continue your journey. You can abandon whatever the plan was and travel with confidence using our app, because, without any planning and without being online, all the facts all the information you need and all the routes are all there for you.

Speaker 1: 10:48

We use. Something I need to explain here a lot. It comes up a lot of time is the legend in the map. To understand what does it mean? What am I looking at? So the first thing people see is red lines on the map. Some are dashed or dotted lines and some are solid lines. So just very quickly, as a legend, every red road on the map, whether it's a solid line or a dash line, is a road or a track. So solid lines means it's sealed. Bitching my eyes tar.

Speaker 1: 11:21

The red lines that are dashed or dotted, that means that's unsealed. Now, if you look carefully, when you use the app, the thickness of these roads changes. So an unsealed road, as we all know, could be like a superhighway. That's called a primary unsealed road. And then you've got secondary unsealed roads, tertiary unsealed roads, and then it comes right down to really minor two-wheel bush tracks, of which you need a four-wheel drive. So the thickness of that dotted line the thinner it gets, the more off-road, the more narrow, more minor the track is. So you can use that very quickly as a visual guide to understand what you're reading on the map.

Speaker 2: 12:01

You don't need any other information to tell you about the road so you can search your capabilities. I don't want to do any dashed lines, I only want the solid lines. Yes, so you just follow it or I'm happy with Great Central Road. So it's a big thick, you know line with dashes versus a little teeny-weenie line. You can be fairly confident that you're not going to end up on some horrible four-wheel drive you know legendary thing when you're really just trying to navigate between two locations.

Speaker 1: 12:24

Yeah, the style sheet in our app. As we've mentioned in earlier podcast episodes that we've done, there's 260 data elements in the app and roads is just one of those. Okay, but I understand that roads is really important to people. But we have a legend that's dynamic and what that means is you can tap the map when the dynamic legend is activated, which you do in the map layers, and anywhere that you tap your finger on the screen, a pop-up box will display a list of all the different data elements at that point and so obviously, if you zoomed in and you've got super detail, you'll get less than if you zoomed out and because your fat finger is going to pop up a large area.

Speaker 1: 13:07

If you understand what I mean, this way you can see the legend definition, because we've got different colour coding for different land type uses. So native tidal versus state forest versus national parks, there's pink-looking lakes versus blue-looking lakes. Tap the legend and have a look at what that means. That will tell you straight away on the map screen. So those sorts of features are digital legend.

Speaker 2: 13:33

We need to talk about the tracking system. We haven't really gone through that within the travel app and the app component Turning on the tracking system. So one of the other things that we've always kind of or we've done for a number of years, even before the apps came out, we had a tracking service where people with different devices and it started out with spot messages and spot satellite services and things like that, and there's in reach and a whole load of other ones and we created an interface for those to basically allow family and friends to see where people are on a map of Australia using the EOTOPO map. So I've got that nice detail and nice information available to show people's journeys using a tracking system.

Speaker 1: 14:13

But also as a backup. People want to have a historical, so it's automatically uploading and saving, so within the app itself.

Speaker 2: 14:18

We have a tracking system. You can flick on a little switch and every position that you touch as you move around will be sent to our server and it will be stored and be able to render on a map or save for future uses and things like that. The app is also always recording you, recording when it's open and when it's running. Every time you move around there is a database being generated or the positions are being saved within your device and so that you can export those later. So I've gone for a great run around the park today. I can take my phone later and I can say, oh, extract, give me all the positions from today and I can then see my little circle so I can create a track. We call it a track log and it's basically an output, rendering or a version of that day's journey on a map that you can keep forever and use.

Speaker 1: 15:11

But that's shareable too. There's a lot you can do with that track log data.

Speaker 2: 15:16

Yeah, and so you can share those with us.