Western Australia's remote north is home to stunning desert scenery that attracts off-road enthusiasts from across the country, but searing heat and rough terrain can land underprepared travellers in serious trouble.
Police in the Pilbara region have carried out three search and rescues in the Western Desert in the past six months and are looking at ways to better harness local Indigenous knowledge to improve their own effectiveness.
"If we have a search out on the Canning Stock Route, the nearest police officers will be a 700-kilometre drive through the desert," Inspector Heather Osborne said.
"But the rangers are actually out there already and they know that country.
"If we have a GPS location for a person, they will know what the best way is to get there, they will know the condition of the road to get out to where they are."
Police host rangers for search training
Police are trying to build relationships with different Indigenous ranger groups across the region and recently hosted Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa rangers for a knowledge-sharing session.
"The two-way learning and inclusiveness was really awesome," ranger Kieran Ingerson said.
"The first session, we went into the use of compasses, grid bearings and references and a lot of the Western way of tracking and finding and using maps.
"Then we went onto search urgency, lost person behaviour and the details around planning a search and rescue."
He said the police training session helped him understand what information police needed during a search, and that the rangers were also able to share their local knowledge and expertise.
"It's important out there because of the remoteness of the country and the landscape … and how commonly the rangers go out onto the land," he said.
"How well they know the country is extremely important."
Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa's executive director of social programs Peter Johnson said Martu rangers were called on by police to help with land searches several times a year.
"Half of the Canning Stock Route runs through Martu Country so there are a lot of tourists that come through just on that alone each year," he said.
"If a car breaks down, gets bogged, and they have capacity to put out a distress signal, rangers are sent out as first responders to try and locate the people."
He said the knowledge Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa rangers could offer police was "absolutely invaluable".
"A combination of an understanding of the country in fine detail, down to knowing which sandhills between a couple of wells on the Canning Stock Route someone is likely to have broken down on, or where water is," he said.
"If someone has broken down and left the car, the capacity to track them and find them.
"All of those things are really special knowledge."
Inspector Osborne said police hoped to build relationships with more local ranger groups.
"It would be really good when someone is missing out there if we can work together with the ranger groups really early in the search, straight away, so that we can work out the best way to go and find them," she said.
