Trainees take instruction in correcting a compass for error at an Empire Air Training Scheme for navigators, Australia, c. 1940. Don Collumbell, who flew in Lancasters with No. 10 Squadron RAF and trained as a navigator at Cootamundra in NSW, recalled the difficulties of map reading in the featureless Australian back country: You get out in the country, the main things that you look for are railway lines, roads, and water tanks. The maps we had in those days had clearly marked water tanks which were for cattle … They were the three main things that you look for and if you crossed over the railway line. Most of the towns in those days were very kind to us, all the pubs had their name of the town written on the pub roofs. [Don Collumbell, interview, Australians at War Film Archive; AWM 128113]
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