Notes from the track

Gum & Canvas is a reference for camping and four-wheel driving in Australia. It covers where to go, what the drive actually asks of a vehicle, and the gear that survives contact with the country it is used in.

How entries are built

Every destination and route entry leads with the same block of data: access rating, season, distance, fuel gap. That is deliberate. Those are the facts that determine whether a trip is feasible in the vehicle you own, and burying them in prose helps nobody.

Entries are compiled from published land-manager information, official road condition reporting and mapping. Where an entry has not been checked on the ground by us recently, it carries a note saying so. We would rather flag that than imply a familiarity we do not have.

What we will not do

We do not invent first-hand experience. If an entry reads as though someone stood in that gorge last winter, it is because they did, and if it does not say that, they did not. A touring reference that fabricates trip reports is worse than useless, because people plan real journeys against it.

We do not publish figures we cannot source. Permit costs, opening dates and road conditions change constantly, so we point you at the managing authority instead of repeating a number that was true once.

Corrections

Conditions change, tracks close and operators come and go. If something here is wrong or out of date, we would like to know so it can be fixed.

Commercial relationships

Some entries link to suppliers we have a commercial relationship with. Those relationships are set out in full on the editorial policy page, and no link on this site is placed without being relevant to the piece it sits in.

Country

Everywhere covered here is Aboriginal land. Entries name the Traditional Owners of the country in question where that is documented, use the restored place names where they exist, and note access restrictions where they apply. Those restrictions exist for reasons that predate the national park around them.