Field-note checklist for contributors

If you might write it up, save the official pages while you still have reception. The desk cannot edit a vibe. A field note without URLs becomes a request that we invent the citations, and we will not.

Capture while you still have signal

1. Park visiting-safely page and the alert that was live when you entered.
2. Permit confirmation (name on the booking, dates, vehicle plate as filed).
3. Roads-authority screenshot or saved page for the highway — QLD Traffic, VicTraffic, Main Roads WA, or the equivalent.
4. BOM warning page for the district, plus tides if the trip is a beach.
5. Signs you photographed — closures, speed, cultural sites — with the date in the file name.
6. Ferry or visitor-pass operator pages if they applied (NPARC, Uunguu, Dambimangari, Arthur-Pieman driver pass).
7. Anything you will not claim later (fees you glimpsed on a board that might change).

Keep the files in a folder named for the park and the date. “July 2026 K’gari inland” is a better filename than “IMG_4402”. When you pitch, those names become the observation sentence: you saw a signed closure on that date, you are not issuing this week’s alert.

What not to capture for publication

Do not capture other travellers’ number plates for a yarn. Do not publish a child’s face at a camp. Do not turn a conversation with a ranger into a fake official quote unless you can attribute it on the record. Do not photograph cultural-site signage in a way that turns a closed place into a location pin. Do not scrape a fee board into a table we will then have to unpublish.

A conversation at a bowser can still inform how you pack. It cannot become “rangers said” in a CMS unless the ranger is willing to be named, or the claim already lives on the park page.

When you get home

Pitch with those URLs, not with “I’ll find the links later”. Later is how invented numbers sneak in. Write the observation in past tense. Link the current official page so the next reader can check whether the gate is still in the same state. Read what we publish before you draft the full piece, and how to brief before you fill the form.

If you lost reception before you saved the alert, reconstruct from the park’s current page and say so: you cannot honestly claim you held a copy of last Tuesday’s bulletin. Honesty about a gap is publishable. A reconstructed “it was definitely closed” is not.

Send the outline through contact. Do not test-submit. Do not attach the whole photo dump in the first email. List the sources. Wait.