The Hema Map Patrol vehicle has travelled countless kilometres through the bush and outback since the Hema Maps company started more than 25 years ago. General Manager Rob Boegheim’s stance is this: “We make road maps, and the only reliable way to be assured that a road is trafficable and to confirm the condition of any track or road, is to drive it. You cannot confirm this from an aerial photo or satellite image.”

Mapping has always conjured romantic images of adventurous explorers and beautiful remote locations. So Hema’s first major project, the Hema Great Desert Tracks Mapping Expedition, was inspired by the efforts of one of Australia’s great modern day explorers - the late Len Beadell. The expedition began after Hema Maps identified an area in Australia that had never been comprehensively mapped with GPS technology and detailed, on-the-ground field checking. This huge area stretched from western Queensland to the Pilbara in Western Australia and from the Kimberley in the north to the Great Australian Bight in the south. Indeed, the expedition area was so vast it had to be done in two phases. Yet capturing all this information and turning it into new maps was only the first step in the process. The existing maps have had to be updated with ongoing field checking throughout the years to ensure the information remains current for the entire project area.

More recently, Hema Maps started a new mapping project, the Great Dividing Range Mapping Expedition. The task of this project is to map every track and road along the length and breadth of one of the longest mountain ranges in the world. Expedition leader Alistair McMillan, with his wife and twin boys, have already spent 12 months undertaking this mammoth task. They enter the collected data directly into Hema’s GIS database, the engine from which all Hema’s mapping products are derived.

Although all the field teams are always experienced travellers, they still have their stories to tell because no matter how often you travel there are always new lessons to learn. But for all the hard stuff (and the weird), given the choice the field teams would never trade it because of the immense feeling of achievement and the great new friends made along the way.