29 October 2009. Surveyed Berry Brow Road between the Great Southern Highway and the Great Eastern Highway at Bakers Hill plus a few other bits and pieces in the Chidlow area. Adding and correcting street names in various suburbs in the hills and down to Midland.

A few more streets in the town locked down to GPS. Not many left.

26 October 2009. Surveyed traces on more streets in and around York, Western Australia. The majority have now been corrected. Getting there.

23 October 2009. Thought I'd take a less direct route from York to Mundaring through the forests which mark the water catchment area for the reservoir Lake C Y O'Connor (Mundaring Weir) in the hills east of Perth. There are many, many roads and tracks through these forests and while most the named roads are graded and good, some of the smaller tracks require 4WD. Anyone heading out here (and the scenery is fantastic) to do any mapping by vehicle, foot or bicycle should take plenty of water and let someone know where they are going and what time they are due back. Don't rely on mobile phone coverage everywhere. The next time I'm driving out here I'm taking my chainsaw because fallen trees over the roads are common.

Note that some areas of the forest are National Parks or Conservation Parks and have restricted access to cars because they are trying to stop the spread of die-back and they don't really want to allow unfettered access to off-road drivers (vehicles should not leave the existing roads or tracks anywhere). When I finally got to civilisation at a car park near Mundaring Weir I found myself on the wrong side of a hefty, locked metal barrier with lots of signs saying I shouldn't be there. Obviously some of the routes in (including the one I took) don't have any "no unauthorised access" signs up, so next time I'll plan my route a little more carefully to make sure I don't stray (by car) into a National Park.

Mundaring National Park and Helena National Park are situated around Lake C Y O'Connor. There are many other National Parks, Nature Reserves, etc. throughout these hills.

22 October 2009. Having established that many of York's streets are inaccurate I have started a GPS survey of all the streets in the town in order to make the corrections. This is work in progress so for the next week or so some parts of town are going to look a bit odd. Also surveyed parts of Helena Road, Catchment Road and the Great Southern Highway.

I was hoping to concentrate on surveying rural roads in the Shire of York which are not currently in the database, since nearly all of the streets within the town have already been mapped. I checked the streets against a local town map to see what needed to be done within the urban area and noticed one street (Seabrook Street) was mapped south of Balladong Street and not north, where it actually is. Decided to GPS survey up and down these and nearby streets in order to make a correction.

Discovered that there's something quite amiss with the mapping of York's town streets. They are mostly all there but some distances are wrong, meaning some streets are too short and some too long. Some areas are accurate (Langford Crescent, Andrews Road and Camfield Place in the York Estates, for instance) and the section of Balladong Street I surveyed is fine. But the more I look at other areas, such as the CBD around Avon Terrace, the more inaccurate it is.

I also surveyed Pioneer Drive up to the Mt Brown Lookout and the junction with Herbert Road was way out.

Before uploading my GPS traces to OSM I open them in GPX format in Google Earth and they are perfect, matching up exactly with the Google Earth image and the Google streets, so I'm sure this isn't a problem with my surveying. My traces also match up with other ones going up Pioneer Drive.

Looks like I have no choice other than to survey all of the streets in York to see how widespread the errors are and make the corrections. I'll do a framework of main streets first to see what parts of town are OK and which bits are inaccurate, then fill in the problem areas. Existing rural roads outside the town seem fine.

I wonder where the current mapping came from? It doesn't have a "source" tab.

Surveyed on 20 October 2009 by car using a Garmin Nuvi 255.

1. York Estates new roads: Andrews Road (according to street signs, not Avenue), Langford Crescent, Camfield Place. Surveyed Attfield Road which stops short of the York-Northam Road, (no junction here).
2. Buckingham Road, Cold Harbour Road, Marwick Road, Osborne Road, Lott Road, Railway Road (part of) and unnamed service road parallel to a section of the railway.
3. Sylvester Court, Nugent Road, Bayly Road, Chandos Road (part).
4. Attfield Road up Mount Brown. A maze of 4WD tracks up here, some are firebreaks, some used to access Water Corporation tanks and pumping station. These tracks are accessible from Attfield Road and from Pioneer Drive. Entrances onto the York-Quairading Road are chained and locked.
5. Pioneer Drive, Mt Brown Lookout and Sydney Road.
6. Edwards Street, Birch Street, Seabrook Street and parts of Balladong Street and Suburban Road. These roads were surveyed to check an error on the existing mapping (where Seabrook Street appeared south of Balladong Street, not north where it should be).

Surveyed on 18 October 2009 by car using a Garmin Nuvi 255.

Started tracking at the entrance to the York Olive Oil Co on Ashworth Road.
Ashworth Road eastwards to junction with Mokine Road.
Mokine Road north to junction with Williams Road.
Williams Road to end (no through road).
Junction of Williams Road and Mokine Road to junction of Mokine Road and Hamersley Siding Road.
Up Hamersley Siding Road a bit (100m or so) then back to junction with Mokine Road.
Mokine Road to junction with Boyercutty Road.
Boyercutty Road, entire length, east to west to junction with Wambyn Road.
Up Wambyn Road northwards a bit (100m) and back southwards down Wambyn Road to the junction with the Great Southern Highway, (signposted "Chidlows York Road" from this direction).
Great Southern Highway eastwards to junction with Ashworth Road.
Ashworth Road to home (326 Ashworth Road).

Surveyed on 16 October 2009 by car using Garmin Nuvi 255.
Ashworth Road connects the Great Southern Highway with Mokine Road. The road is mostly unsealed apart from sealed sections at both ends and on the bend past the York Olive Oil Company.
Surveyed separate tracks in both directions for each sealed or unsealed section.
GPX files uploaded 17 October 2009.