Emergency services are today searching for a bushwalker missing in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains for the past week. While in Tasmania, a solo hiker has been rescued after he failed to return to his family while hiking on the south coast track. It follows the deaths of three other bushwalkers in Tasmania at the end of 2024.
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00:00A lot of it comes down to being bushwalkers, we are very well aware of the risks and experienced
00:07people have actually gone through, a lot of us have gone through the ropes of working
00:11up from very basic walks, learning how to navigate, learning what gear can be happening,
00:17learning how to read the weather, learning how to forecast and ultimately learning how
00:21to not only self-rescue but search and rescue for others lost and to see what's been happening
00:28With distressing regularity is people becoming lost or having other misadventures in an area
00:36where they're meant to be enjoying it and extending themselves, so yes it's distressing
00:41and sometimes these are preventable and I guess that's the gist of bushwalking clubs
00:48and search and rescue is that proper preparedness does prevent piss-poor performance
00:55Part of the issue has been over-reliance on technology particularly GPS units and your
01:03smartphones with downloaded tracks on them, I think people do underestimate what remote
01:10actually means, it's definitely something a lot of us yearn for and we wish to go for
01:15and to get offline, however when it comes to an emergency situation knowing what to
01:22do to help yourself or help those around you has to be unreliant upon technology and
01:29look back in the day we didn't have the emergency responses we used to, a former patient of
01:36mine handed me some maps with the words on it, there is no such thing as a day pack because
01:42literally every day walk you went on you had to presume you were going to be left out overnight
01:47potentially with a snake bite and what would you do in those circumstances so yes the over-reliance
01:52on technology I think is probably going to be something that's more a feature of the
01:57reason for some of these rescues. I think the reality is that particularly in Tasmania's
02:03wilderness and a lot of the outback and wilderness areas in Australia the skills necessary to
02:08enjoy a multi-night hike don't come overnight, the skills and experience themselves take
02:14years of development preferably with learning from those more experienced than you and going
02:21out in supervised conditions to practice with the gear first but also in the more remote
02:27areas going with bushwalking clubs and remote area search and rescue volunteers I mean these
02:33are the people who can instil the experience and also the respect for the natural environment
02:39in those of us who then you know may then go out and do these things ourselves particularly
02:44for multi-day walks in Tasmania. My best advice to someone who wants to go out into
02:49multi-walks in Tasmania and doing it with themselves or a group of friends is to get
02:53your grounding with local bushwalking clubs and learn how to use the gear, learn how to
03:00read maps, learn how to use a compass and learn how to use a map and learn how to use
03:06your skills and your intuition without having to rely on technology. Multi-night hikes in
03:13remote areas are dangerous, they are enjoyable but they are dangerous and please do not rely
03:19on social media, videos, influencers, self-proclaimed guides who have been to one place once and
03:26then give a guide online as to how to get there these are undeniably dangerous there's
03:32no shortcut for becoming experienced at bushwalking it's something that you learn year after year
03:40with people who are really experienced and trust the local knowledge. My advice to people
03:44who are wanting to go out into Tasmania in remote area bushwalks without the necessary
03:50experience is to look into some of the many experienced guiding companies you know who
03:56will have local guides experience in the area that's your safest bet.