A small revolution in the way we see the world (and rail trails)

26 July 2005

We don't normally promote commercial websites but Google Earth is fairly significant as it provides easy acess to three dimensional mapping of the whole world to a huge range of people. If you are fortunate enough to have broadband access it can be downloaded from Google Earth.

At this stage a lot of Australia is still at a fairly low resolution but there are sections where the detail is amazing. Steve Howard from Cowra has created tours for a section of the Murray to Mountains Rail Trail that is in high resolution and his own trail proposal from Cowra to Eugowra. This includes a line showing the route of the rail trail. The width and colour of the line, and the height and speed of the tours can be adjusted, along with numerous other options.

Railtrails Australia is working to create files for all open and prospective rail trails in Australia. Hopefully more sections of Australia will have higher resolution soon. If you would like to help please contact us.

While it is a great tool, from a personal point of view I hope that all people find that no computer program beats the real thing of getting out on a rail trail.

We are not sure how often the program's data is updated or when it was captured. A lot of areas do not look the best at the end of summer and so information captured then would not be the most flattering!