Photogrammetry in Australia
During the four years since the last International Congress, the Australian Photogram-
metric Society expanded its membership in the five States and the Capital Territory reach-
ing a peak of five hundred and eighty four members in 1968/69 and declining to about
three hundred members in recent years. This decline in membership of the Society has in
part been due to the reduction in the number of people, particularly visitors from overseas
who are available to lecture members on new or unusual subjects and to the dispersion
of members over an area the size of Europe who have few opportunities to meet.
Since the last Congress, consideration has been given to altering the structure of the
Australian Photogrammetric Society with a view to enlarging the membership, improving
the functioning of the Society and the communications between the State branches and the
Governing Institutions of Surveyors and Cartographers. The formation of an autonomous
Society has also been considered, Recommendations have been prepared but not yet im-
plemented.
Photogrammetry has, however, become well established in Australia with six State
mapping organisations, some fifteen private mapping firms and three Commonwealth autho-
rities, Ten aerial survey companies provide the bulk of the photographic requirements of
all organisations.
Generally instrumentation and methods of observation, adjustment and production
have been consolidated and high quality mapping is becoming available at an increasing
rate. Some experimental work is being carried out in the field of remote sensing and its
subsequent interpretation. There is also experimental work being done in the production
of orthophotographic mapping; the Commonwealth mapping authorities producing 1:50 000
and 1:100 000 orthophoto maps, the States producing maps at scales ranging from 1:2000
to 1:5 000.
A laser altimeter has been designed and produced in Australia and has been in oper-
ation for a year during which some 55 000 km of height profiling has been provided; suffi-
cient for 482 000 km? of mapping at 1:100 000 scale.
Education in photogrammetry is a province of the Surveying Departments of the
Universities of New South Wales, Melbourne and Queensland and of the Colleges of
Advanced Education (Technical Institutes) in Canberra, New South Wales, Victoria, South
Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. No course in photogrammetry as a discipline
in its own right is available in Australia.
Training for photogrammetric technicians is available in many of the larger Colleges
of Advanced Education but the output to date has not been sufficient to satisfy the demand
and most new operators are still being trained by the mapping organisation employing
them,
In 1964 a Summer School of Photogrammetry was instigated by the Department of
Surveying of the University of Melbourne and it has proved to be remarkably popular and
successful with students from Australia, Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands attending
for a period of six weeks in January and February each year. Lectures and practical exer-
cises are tailored to suit the abilities and requirements of students having a variety of
academic standing and practical experience. Overseas students so wishing are able to
spend up to three months with a mapping organisation in Australia to consolidate their
learning. In the four years since the last Congress, some forty two students from eighteen
foreign countries have attended the Summer School.
The next four years will undoubtedly see a healthy growth in the use of photogrammetry
for mapping and photography for interpretation. In a developing country of such size and
with limited resources in manpower there cannot be any other outcome. Unfortunately it is
not nearly so certain that the Australian Photogrammetric Society will grow proportionate-
ly and it will require a good deal of work by the few enthusiastic members to maintain the
very existence of the Society.
Australian Photogrammetric Society
Box 1020H, G.P.O.
Melbourne, 3001, Australia
