For overlanders, lappers and long-haul travellers
Bigdust turns a long trip into a living map: the roads you drove and the ones you're planning, every photo where it was taken, the springs and gorges you want to reach, fuel with prices, hazards, the vet, the people you met. It lives in a folder you own, not on someone's server.
Born on a lap of Australia in a LandCruiser. Built for anywhere there's a road, or nearly one.
Ownership
Every app that maps your travels keeps them on its servers, under its terms, for as long as it exists. Bigdust does the opposite. Your trip is a folder on your own computer. Photos, routes, notes, the log: plain files in open formats you can read in twenty years. Bigdust is the map that opens them.
The maps, routing, prices and weather come from the best services available and are metered like electricity. If Bigdust vanished tomorrow, you would lose the pretty part and nothing else.
What it does
Type two towns or click the map; the route follows real roads with distance and driving time. Save it, drive it, and every photo taken along it attaches itself. Hover the road, see the photo.
Hot springs, gorges, rock art, outback pubs, fishing, walks, surf, paddling, fossicking, dark skies. Each with a season note and a priority. Import your Google lists; add finds as you hear about them.
Every fuel stop along a leg in driving order, diesel and petrol prices where they're reported, and the longest stretch without fuel measured against your real range.
Give the plan a start date; each stop gets its forecast for the day you arrive, with warnings for heavy rain, 40° days and storms. Beyond the forecast, what's typical for that fortnight.
Fuel fills, tyres, windscreens, filters, repairs, camp fees. Tallies and costs, your measured consumption, service due in kilometres, and the puncture on the Plenty pinned where it happened.
Sue and Dave with the Oka. Where you met, their number, their handle, what they told you. One tap to WhatsApp; one tap to add them to Contacts with the photo and the story.
Paste a page of nights as date, place, note. Stops appear, dates attach, and one button draws the driven route between every pair, following the roads.
Google's roads, terrain and satellite; national topographic mapping with the station tracks; open outdoor maps. Switch by taste. Hand any stop to Google or Apple Maps for the turn-by-turn.
Vets, dog parks and places recorded as dog-friendly. Baiting areas as notes that expire, with each state's official pages one tap away, because a muzzle and a lead are the only real protection.
Safety layers
Bigdust shows what the official sources publish and what you record yourself. It is a planning aid, not a substitute for the ranger, the roadhouse, or your own eyes at the crossing.
How it works
Bigdust opens in your browser. You choose a folder on your computer and that's where the trip lives. No account, nothing uploaded.
Drop in photos and they land where they were taken. Paste the journal. Import your Google list of places. The map fills in; the routes draw themselves.
Add stars along the way, check fuel, hazards and weather for the leg, then hand the route to your phone's navigation. Come back and mark it driven.
Price
Everything included
For most travellers. Cancel any time; the map keeps working with free maps and your data is untouched.
Own it outright
For people who want no recurring anything. It's how Bigdust was built.
Founding travellers
Bigdust is being finished on the road, on a lap of Australia. The first twenty travellers get it at the founding price for life, a direct line to the people building it, and their names in the log. Leave your email and we'll hold you a place.
Or follow the trip it's being built on: @joysworldtrip
Questions
In a folder you choose on your own computer. The trip is a GeoJSON file, an open standard any mapping app can read; photos are ordinary JPEGs. Nothing is uploaded to Bigdust. If you want family to see it, you copy the folder to any web host and it's a website, or use the sharing we're adding.
Today it's a laptop tool: plan at camp on the Mac or PC, then hand routes to Google or Apple Maps on the phone for navigation. A phone version that works offline is the next big piece of work, and founding travellers get it first.
No. It was born on a lap of Australia, so the starter lists, the state safety links and the national road-closure feed are Australian today. The map, routing, weather, fuel, places, people and log work anywhere, and you can set your home country in a click. Asia is next for its makers, so Asia is next for Bigdust.
Keep them; Bigdust plays well with them. Hema for the outback tracks on the phone, Polarsteps for the automatic breadcrumb trail, WikiCamps for tonight's camp. Bigdust is the book of the whole trip, the one you'll still have when those apps have changed hands.
Google charges per map view, route and lookup. A traveller planning most evenings uses a few dollars' worth a month, which is what the yearly plan covers. The lifetime plan lets you attach your own Google key, which for one household stays inside Google's free allowance.
Two people and a dog, somewhere in the Northern Territory this month, twenty months into a lap of Australia in a LandCruiser, with Asia to follow. Bigdust exists because nothing else kept the trip the way we wanted to keep it.