A new travel app, designed for use on iPads, assists visitors to explore
Gunnedah and other locations along the Kamilaroi Highway in New South
Wales.
The application was the brainchild of the Kamilaroi Highway
Group, a consortium of councils in the region that see their role as the
promotion of a journey from ‘The Great Divide to the Outback’.
The
Kamilaroi Highway links the upper Hunter Valley with outback NSW, a 600
kilometre journey that begins just across the Great Dividing Range at
Willow Tree and follows the course of the Namoi River as it makes its
way towards the Darling River then on to Bourke.
The region is the
agricultural heartland of NSW, growing everything from wheat, to cotton,
to sunflowers. The area’s attractions range from the sight of giant
combine harvesters travelling through acres of grain, to mountain vistas
and ‘sunburnt plains’.
The Kamilaroi Highway Group developed the app
to engage directly with travellers, using stories, imagery, video and
interactive elements that showcase the Kamilaroi Highway and the towns
along it in ways that had not been previously possible.
Gunnedah
Visitor Information Centre assisted in the development of the Kamilaroi
Highway Travel App, which was a finalist in the 2012 Regional
Development Australia Northern Inland Innovation Awards in the
Tourism/Leisure and Related Services Category.
Gunnedah Tourism
Promotions Officer, Belinda Hockings and Tourism Manager at Narrabri
Shire Council, Penny Jobling were the driving force behind the app and
managed the project from concept to fruition.
Belinda noted that,
“The most important objective for this initiative was to ensure that the
beauty, inspiration, stories and characters found along the Kamilaroi
Highway could be communicated to the travelling public using the latest
and fastest growing communications mediums available.
“The rationale
was simple — people are using digitally interactive applications, so we
developed the Kamilaroi Highway Travel Guide for the iPad to allow them
to experience our product.
“Nobody else had ever done it, so we wanted to be market leaders in offering this commodity to the world.”
