Questions regarding the Treks section

1. A number of factors determine fuel consumption
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Have a look at this.... read the fine print at the bottom.

2. Driving time is the total hours driven by that person on that trek. Look at this
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What does it say above the driving time? It says min 3 days. These treks are a guide and information provided will be what that person encountered at that time. Things change, but the trek notes are a really good place to start. If you know things have changed then let David or Damien or others at EO know.
Hope this helps.
regards

Hi Moose, how are ya?

Not sure about fuel consumption accuracy, but these treks have been driven by experienced drivers, and I would assume their figures are reasonable, probably accurate for their vehicle, and averaged for others.

The trek notes are often written by people like Mick O and Stephen L for example,(many others, too numerous to mention), intrepid outback adventurers who make us mere mortals green with envy. Among other things, they use a GPS device that logs the total distance travelled, average speed, the amount of time you are moving, the amount of time you are stopped, etc, etc.

You will notice if you look, that there is a recommended amount of time required to do the trek 'justice'.

You will also see if you look, that there is an 'updated on dd:mm:yyyy' note on each trek.

There is nothing special about their GPS units, its just not a TomTom that takes you around the city. I have a TomTom, but also asked advice from Stephen L, and bought one more suitable for off road travel.

Hope this helps you with your query,

Cheers, Dave

The driving time is the sum of the driving time between various way points.
Its an indication of the time taken to do the section from example way Point No 1 to way point No 2 is 45 minutes, way point No 2 to 3 is 60 minutes the sum is now 105 minutes travel time and on it goes.
When you add up all these times and distances between the way points it will provide you with the totals.

Any updates would mean notable changes by the last poster to what has been noted previously in the notes.

Example, the Fred Blog Creek is now washed away and may be more difficult than previously listed.

The notes are not definitive but a very good guide in my view and I use them as the first point of call when researching and proposed trip.
Mostly I have found them to actually be quite accurate and very good to use.

As the others have said the information was imported and written once - it is then updated as we re-travel or get information from you (everyone). The base of the data is generated from GPS data derived whilst actually travelling the track so should be as accurate as the GPS was on the day (minus any new road modifications or storm damage). We do update the driving route sections as new GPS data is uploaded into the plot swap system using a programmed updater that looks for file accuracy and most recent date, this may update just a small section of a trek but will reflect the most accurate, most recent data we have for each section.

If there is an error simply use the Trek Feedback system at the bottom of the page - this is also something you should read in order to determine if there are any additional factors that have been supplied via feedback since the last note update. There is also a link to other travel journals (blog entries) that would be relevant to the trek note itself.

Your point three is so subjective in terms of the road conditions as vehicle destroying corrugations for one are a patch of corrugations for another. I have been on a road and thought those were ok corrugations and got to camp to have others tell me I was mad and that their dash board fell out and their suspension fell apart over that section - So what is bad for one is impossible for another. Corrugations are a part of outback travel personally I do not really care about them just drive to the conditions at the time. So it is impossible to supply a detailed answer to this question in the treknotes or even the camp site at the end of the road. We are about to link the official road conditions system into the trek notes so that the mapping system and driving notes will also supply the historical road conditions status and current status + notes. This will help link these two parts together and provide you with more information.

Permit information is updated all the time and is accurate. We are called and advised by the various agencies and bodies around the country when these need to be addressed. Plus we get a lot of feedback from you guys when things are not right (the feedback system).

So when the note was created is very meaningless as we update various parts of these notes all the time - in fact it would take me some work to pull out the dates and times of every update (we have this but it is a massive amount of data that is linked together to create a trek).

Is there something else you think we need to add, is missing or needs to be looked at? I am really asking this as I am working on the treks and mapping routing systems over the next few weeks so any feedback is welcome.

I hope this helps answer some of your questions please feel free to ask anything else about the information.

David