Uh-oh. I think I may be about to sound like an old person, because I’m going to write about maps. Not Google Maps, but real maps.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved maps. As a fishing-mad boy, poring over maps was a form of virtual angling. Even when housebound, I could explore the streams around the family home near Mt Buller, and later, the Otways and the Grampians in southwest Victoria. Of special fascination were the more remote waters. My finger would trace the blue lines way back in the bush, looking for old tracks, or even spur lines that weren’t too steep or treacherous-looking.

I learnt to mesh on-ground experience, with what the maps said. For example, in the Otways, crowded contours crossing a stream invariably meant a waterfall (often unmarked and unnamed). In many cases, as my fishing mates and I discovered to our bitter disappointment, these features were evidently an insurmountable barrier to upstream trout migration. In the very early days, we would sometimes bush-bash for hours down a spur or overgrown logging track, lured on halfway by the distant sound of running water. Eventually, we would burst out into the comparative daylight of the stream, which we knew would probably never have been fished.

We would stalk the first pool, waiting for the rise of a naïve trout. But there would be nothing in that pool, nor the next. Over time, we learnt that the presence of free-swimming water slaters was the giveaway. If they were confined to the shallowest edges or cutoff backwaters, trout were present. But if they happily skated around midstream, there were no trout.

There was so much to learn from maps. Around Mt Buller or even in parts of the Otways, a close inspection of an upland stream’s course might reveal a hidden river flat; an oasis of gentle contours in an area otherwise dominated by cliffs, gorges and boulders. Besides ease of fishing, the modest gradient of such places often meant deeper, slower water, undercut banks, and a decent flood refuge for the trout. All of this held the promise of bigger fish.

Such trout were also a possibility in the freakishly deep pools often found at the base of waterfalls. (A sort of grand finale ahead of the trout-less water upstream.)

Our explorations, at first entirely dependent on printed topographic maps, would then sometimes lead to my own creations, containing key details missing from the originals, which we could refer back to if needed.

All this was as much about the joy of possibility, as it was the practical. Sometimes, it was as if drawing my own map brought me closer to the place in question.

For all that, there’s also the inescapable practicality of a good map. This was brought home to me on a recent trip to Tasmania, when, for the first time ever, I made the stupid mistake of not bringing my hardcopy maps.

It seems to be a fact of life that on any significant trip, I’ll forget something useful. Not necessarily the critical stuff – I have a basic checklist for that. But on this trip, I left behind maps and Payette Paste, that wonder gunk to help keep the leader butt and flyline tip buoyant, particularly in rough water (a common feature of Tasmania’s windswept lakes) .

Anyway, maybe I subconsciously considered I could access electronic maps while in Tassie, and thereby negate the need for the real thing. Well, if that was the idea, it was a dismal failure. For a start, the usually weak internet reception at our accommodation became non-existent. Whether it was Australia Day long weekend congestion, or some other gremlin, I simply could not access maps on my laptop or phone. I know the Tassie highlands and lakes well, but there was a certain helplessness trying to remember, say, the exact orientation of a certain lakeshore relative to the forecast wind. And was that cross-country trek to lake X off track A, or track B? And did you bear to the left or right of that small hill?

There was small mercy in the fact that Kiel, the youngest and perhaps most tech savvy of our group, had worked out how to upload some maps to his phone in advance, so we could view those as a backup. However, I still found a tiny iPhone screen a clumsy alternative to the simultaneous detail and context of a nice big sheet of paper.

I’ve written before that the electronic age offers a lot to be thankful for. However, it has also brought with it losses. The declining availability of high quality printed maps (and the inability of many to read them) is one of those losses, as is the simple pleasure of wandering over a map on the kitchen table, and wondering what lies in those yet-to-be explored valleys.

Philip Weigall

Editor