The art of navigation is not lost
Learning how to navigate with a map and compass
Geography Victoria event 30 June 2025
Heading out on trails to explore unfamiliar natural and urban environments is a rewarding and popular pastime in Australia. The latest AusPlay Report released 30th April 2025 states that 16.9% of adult Australians participated in bushwalking over 2024 and 49.9% of adult Australians participated in recreational walking. While many trails are well-maintained and marked, there are times when things can go wrong, even for the most experienced bushwalkers. As the ABC reported on the 22 September 2021:
Trevor Salvado is not the kind of person you'd expect to get lost in the bush. He's an experienced hiker who loves the outdoors and has been involved with search and rescue operations. But in 2019, Mr Salvado and his wife Jacinta Bohan were on a hike in Victoria's Mount Buffalo National Park when things went very wrong. "We were walking on the track and the bush was just getting thicker and thicker … And then we walked into a position where we couldn't really see any more [track] markers," he tells ABC RN's Sunday Extra. "And with the scrub thickening up, we actually weren't quite sure which direction we'd come from." The couple stopped and spent five minutes discussing, each convinced they had come from a different direction. "Then we just came to the conclusion, OK, we're lost. What do we need to do now?"
Learning or refreshing navigation skills for risk mitigation and building confidence is not the only reason to build these skills. Navigation itself can be a strategic, problem-solving social activity to do outdoors, commonly in orienteering or rogaining events. The sold-out workshop held by Geography Victoria included a beginner’s guide to reading a contour map and working with a map and compass, and an introduction to rogaining. Both were run by Paddy Pallin staff.
The evening began with warming soup and chatter. Thus fortified we began to learn the basics of map reading, with those more experienced in each group lending a friendly hand to beginners. We learnt that navigation is not only done through instruments but by using nature, and often these two methods go together. This workshop focused on the use of map and compass and we were introduced to map reading through BOLTSS (border, orientation, legend, title, scale and source). As the evening progressed, what had seemed a clump of impenetrable lines on a map began to morph into a picture of terrain features including spurs, saddles, ridges and hills. We were introduced to these concepts through a 'fist model'.
The next concept we learnt about was magnetic declination, the angle between magnetic north and true north at a location on the Earth’s surface, and we then went on to be introduced to the features of a compass. At each stage, the Paddy Pallin team guided us through short practical activities using plenty of provided equipment and maps, which allowed everyone to have a go. It was a relief to come to understand that while there is a very technical side to navigation, it is possible to learn the basics fairly quickly. By the end of the first part of the evening we were confidently suggesting the direction required to get from one suggested point to another on the given contour map.
The second part of the evening introduced us to rogaining. Rogaining is a navigation team sport against the clock. Unlike orienteering which is a race from point to point, rogainers collect points at designated checkpoints in a given area, with different checkpoints worth different points. Teams work together to plot an optimum course to suit their needs, whether that be accumulating the greatest points possible in the shortest time, trying for fewer points from more challenging checkpoints, or aligning enjoyment of a day out in the bush and all that nature offers to speed and time. The day ends with sharing a meal and stories of the day. We learnt that rogaining began in Australia in 1947 when two Melbourne University Mountaineering Club members challenged two other members to navigate from Warburton to Hurstbridge via Mt Donna Buang, Healesville and Steeles Creek in 24 hours with food, but no tents. Paddy Pallin himself organised the first Australian ‘orienteering contest’ in 1965 in the Blue Mountains, out of concern for lack of navigation skills in bushwalkers, and this has evolved to be the Paddy Pallin rogain. Some Paddy Pallin staff to this day are keen rogainers. One of these rogainers provided us with some background to the sport and taught us how to read a rogaining map. More information on this now worldwide sport, is available from the Victorian Rogaining Association website.
The evening finished with the Paddy Pallin staff raffling some compasses and a book as door prizes. Enthusiastic participants began to already discuss how they might apply their new skills and looked towards lighter evenings later in the year to potentially gather again.
Monica Bini – Geography Victoria member