The Australian Bushwalking FAQ

For feedback about any of these pages, contact the FAQ maintainer Roger Caffin.

About this FAQ

As new walkers start bushwalking they invariably have lots of questions. Many of them have been asked and answered many times: they are Frequently Asked Questions. Club members cheerfully answer such questions, especially while walking along on a trip. When this happens on a UseNet newsgroup someone eventually collects a lot of the answers and puts them into an FAQ file. It used to be traditional to post the FAQ file to the newsgroup at regular intervals. However, bushwalking has a lot of subjects, and this has lead to a very large collection of information. Unfortunately, such information tends to be scattered. As an aid to newcomers to bushwalking we have put together this web site. By nature it is a "work in progress", so if you think something is missing, don't complain: contribute!

DISCLAIMER #1

Outdoor activities carry their own risks of injury and death. Neither the maintainer nor any other contributors to these FAQ pages have any control over what the reader does, and cannot accept any liability for any loss or accidents which the reader might suffer. The contents of this web site must NOT be relied upon for medical advice. Failing all else, read the NSW Civil Liability Act 2002. If you don't know what you are doing, get competent advice from a competent club.

DISCLAIMER #2

This FAQ is totally independent of Bushwalk.org, even though it is currently hosted on their web site. Bushwalk.org neither endorses nor supports what is written here and has had no input to the contents at all. The maintainer is grateful to Bushwalk.org for the hosting, but all responsibility rests with him.

Technical notes about these pages

Some FAQ pages are large, some are small. There are hyperlinks to take you to different sections. If the whole thing doesn't seem very fancy, well, it isn't meant to be. A lot of it has been written by the maintainer, often using rather old HTML. So if it seems a little biased ... yep. Did you expect otherwise?

At present the FAQ has only a few specific gear "recommendations", and even those are just the opinions of individuals (legal disclaimer). The most prominent ones? Comfort and Light Weight. Part of the problem with recommending gear is that there is just so many different models of any piece of gear, and some areas keep changing; another part of the problem is that everyone has different requirements (or prejudices).

For the technically minded: this web site has been written using a basic editor, simple html tags and one simple style sheet: it should run on any current browser, although it helps if it can display pictures. There are no videos, there are NO Flash files, there is no JavaScript, there is no Java. It has been kept simple and light. In addition, there are no proprietary non-standard html 'features' as found with some aberrant web browsers (eg Internet Explorer). More to the point, the html commands have been minimised and all the crap which some 'HTML Editors' insert quite gratuitously has been ruthlessly eliminated. It should load fast. If you want to download the lot onto your computer, feel free.

This FAQ used to be hosted by the NSW Confederation of Bushwalking Clubs, but recently (2025) they dropped it, without any real explanation. So at present the FAQ is being rebuilt here at bushwalk.org, with thanks to WildWalks, but it is very much a work-in-progress. So some of the links will not work - yet. Some of the text is horribly out of data too. I am working on it. RNC