OpenStreetMap
I figured it was time I stopped pestering the talk-au list and pester everyone else instead :)
Thanks to some grey nomads donating GPS data I've mapped out several areas in Australia where there was absolutely nothing before hand.
Like the road from St George to Mitchell in QLD, all current maps show this as dirt but it's now paved. osm.org/go/ucYlwCm--
These tracks to the south west of Darwin osm.org/go/tvHxUA@ and these tracks to the north east of Darwin osm.org/go/tvZLl@a
There was also 1 or 2 short tracks added in the Kakadu national park.
I was also able to realign small parts of the Stuart Highway that were poorly drawn.
They're thinking about coming back along Highway 1, which so far has only been drawn from low res sat imagery so this would allow the way to be drawn much better.
Discussion
Comment from Rhubarb on 24 August 2009 at 12:30
What a great idea! Grey nomads would be great for OSM!
You'd get lots of outback roads, toilets, coffee shops, and caravan parks / sites this way :D
Now all I've got to do, is to find a GPS logger that's easy to use (preferably switch on and forget - but some training should be easy enough to do).
Thanks for the great idea John :D
Comment from JohnSmith on 24 August 2009 at 13:41
In this case they had their own Uniden GPS and it can be configured to log raw nmea strings once a second they emailed me 150M of nmea files so far :)
As for something simple to use, the biggest problem with grey nomads would be the time they're away you need a large amount of storage space, so cheap loggers on ebay are out, you need to pay a bit extra to get more storage space.
Just need to find some more grey nomads to track now :)
PS they don't like people knowing about their special camping spots that no one else knows about :)
Comment from Waldo000000 on 24 August 2009 at 23:13
As for cheap loggers, if 128MB is enough, you could try an Amod AGL3080 - http://www.semsons.com/amaggpsdalos.html
Comment from JohnSmith on 25 August 2009 at 05:02
Roy, the only problem with that logger is the 15 hours per 3xAAA batteries, for grey nomads it would need to plug into the cig socket or be solar powered, but the only solar powered one I know of is very limited in the number of points it can record, under 38,000 for time, lat, lon, hdop.