Mapping Australia - Some Anecdotes

Joining the field section of the Division of National Mapping (Nat Map) in Melbourne in 1977, I had 13 years of field work to look forward to. Initially, just after WW2, when Nat Map was established to map Australia at 1: 100 000 scale with 20 metre contours, field trips could last six months or more. By the time I joined, field trips were usually a comfortable 6 weeks or less. Ample time for Ann to take charge at home and for me to concentrate on the job. Here are a few stories from those days.

My first field trip with Nat Map was to WA to take over laser profiling (obtaining height details for contouring) of part of the Great Sandy Desert. First, I had to fly to Fitzroy Crossing to join the crew, this took most of two days. On arrival, the party leader I was to relieve informed me that our aircraft (a Nomad) was due for a 100 hourly service and we were off to Darwin for the weekend (great ! I hadn’t been to Darwin). The service went well until all the engineer had to do was change the oil in the engines. One engine dropped a bunch of ball bearings out with the oil! So, on Monday everyone, except the new boy (me) went out to the airport to help remove the problem engine. I was asked to call the office, which I did. The boss wasn’t too happy to learn that we were all in Darwin and no one was with the vehicles in Fitzroy Crossing. So, all the crew, except three of us, were returned to Melbourne. We three were to maintain the laser equipment in the plane and write a technical paper on the Laser Profiling program (great way for me to learn). The two week turn around for the engine fix, in Sydney, became a bit more than three weeks. Interestingly we had to send the engine to Sydney by commercial airliner. To get it (in a large wooden box) to and from the passenger terminal, we balanced it on the bonnet of a Mini Moke and ‘walked’ it across the tarmac. Wouldn’t happen today!

Back in operational mode I found myself, now based in Nullagine, with a new crew and new pilot. The only continuing fellows were the two camped out at Kidson Field waiting to refuel the aircraft at the end of each profiling run. They had had a quiet three weeks while the plane was stuck in Darwin. I was immediately faced with two problems. First the Nomad used jet fuel so all our fuel had been delivered to the helipad in town, the contractor thinking it was for a helicopter. So, we had to strip one of the trucks of its equipment and transfer 20 x 44 gallon drums 7 kilometres out to the airstrip. This was achieved by willing hands getting up before dawn so we didn’t lose a day’s work. The next problem came when we reached the end of our first 4 hour run to the east and I asked the pilot to head to Kidson to refuel. He said ‘where is it?’ I said ‘don’t know, haven’t been here before’. Neither had he. We called up the ground crew but they couldn’t hear the plane. Knowing the airstrip was near the Canning Stock Route and that it would be on a gravelled area (not sand ridges) we decided to head south west, where there were some patches of gravel on our aerial photos. Eventually the ground crew heard us and guided us in (for a baked dinner while they did the refuelling). We then flew 4 hours back to Nullagine. Two lines profiled AND Kidson Field marked on our charts for future reference. I actually accomplished 3 weeks of solid work before the next change over. We always worked 6 long days a week in the field, for a set allowance, not overtime.

I was pleasantly surprised by how hard the crew worked when in the field. Most preferred the field and found the office mundane and boring. As I mentioned above, when we were confronted with having to move our fuel everyone worked hard to ensure we didn’t lose any time. I would always try to send one chap I had in the party, ahead to the next town to arrange accommodation etc. as he could always find a cousin or friend to set things up. He looks like Oil Can Harry out of Popeye, so good to drink with in a rough pub. He was the quintessential gentle giant. You could ask him to take a truck to anywhere in Australia and he would be there on the appointed day, all set up and ready to work. It was this fellow who rose before dawn at Nullagine, stripped one of our trucks and then organised the transfer of fuel drums to the airport. Back in the office, however, was another matter. One Friday my truck driver friend had the maximum 2 hour lunch break at the pub and had returned to sleep it off in the sick room. I received many complaints from office staff about his snoring. When I woke him and told him to go home, he said he couldn’t as he needed to get his flex time up. I told him to go home anyway and we would sort out his flex time later!

Towards the end of the Laser Profiling program we were asked to do a special survey over Maralinga for the Army. We couldn’t camp at Maralinga due to radiation concerns. So we based ourselves at Ceduna. Apart from a mouse plague at the time, we had two interesting events. First the Nomad’s auto pilot stuck in the ON position and the pilot couldn’t disengage it. So we kept travelling at the same level no matter what. The pilot asked me to remove the fuse for the auto pilot but after checking its location and finding it was in located outside in the wheel well I declined to remove it. So I sat in the co-pilots seat and at the command of the pilot we both pushed as hard as we could on the controls. Thankfully this broke the auto pilot’s command and put us into a dive. Back to Adelaide for a fix, flying with manual control. Then towards the end of our job we were contacted late one Saturday night and asked to go and search for a sinking lugger off the coast. The lugger had run out of flares so he was to flash a signal torch when he heard our aircraft. Yes, it was raining. As we started our search pattern I noticed a light flashing through the clouds. So I flashed my light in return. We kept this up while letting down. As we broke through the bottom of the clouds I was able to report that I had found a lighthouse, almost level with us. Reminds one of the story of the battleship and the lighthouse.

Once compiled from aerial photos, we field inspected our maps to add names, road classification etc and to confirm interpretation of detail. Inspecting map sheets in western NT, we camped at a station airstrip in the Tanami Desert. The station manager said there was a drop toilet at the strip but it hadn’t been used for a while so we would need to burn the redbacks out. This we did, but instead of dropping lighted newspaper, by dropping some Avgas down followed by a match. The next day was spent rebuilding the toilet.

I had to go to Mount Isa late in the season to spot photograph some new yard and building complexes. I flew commercially to Isa and hired a local plane. It was often problematic getting contract pilots to tip their plane over enough so that the photos (taken out the window) would be vertical. Having told the pilot what I wanted we circled over the first spot, I open the window and lent out as far as I could to get my photo. The plane then tipped to almost 90 degrees. Just as well I was strapped in. The pilot then explained he was used to this sort of thing as he had to get photos looking down the mine chimney every month or so. My photos for this trip were very vertical!

Rod Menzies
October 2021