TONY PROUST I recently completed a much anticipated road trip to Cameron Corner, a surveyors’ icon, with my wife Sheila, in our 16-year-old 4WD van. My insurance – given the age of our trusty workhorse – was a hired satellite phone that gave us peace of mind. We headed west from Bourke to Tibooburra, then […]

SIMON ARTHUR and DAVID ELDRIDGE In an effort to enhance mine safety, the management of Beaconsfield gold mine, at Beaconsfield in north eastern Tasmania, has purchased a new laser scanning system. It can rapidly scan the underground workings. What’s more, it is remote-controlled, so the operators are never exposed to danger. Historically, Beaconsfield’s mine surveying […]

JON FAIRALL Australians may still be locked into a grand debate between climate change sceptics and Greenies, but the polar bears are in no doubt. Neither are the world's oil companies. As the Arctic ice sheet collapses, the bears are heading south into the steaming heat of the Canadian steppes and the oil prospectors are […]

WAL MAYR Airborne laser scanning is a relatively recent technology that has revolutionised the capture of terrain information. It involves the emission and measurement of laser pulses from an airborne scanner. Until recently, it was mainly used to capture large areas of relatively low-resolution digital terrain data. However, in the past few years a range […]