Cam IncollFieldwalker automatically retrieves high-resolution elevation data and generates contour lines for any property, so permaculture designers can understand the shape of their land without spending hours sourcing and processing data from government portals and GIS software.
If you've studied permaculture, you know that water comes first. Before you place a swale, site a dam, plan access routes, or lay out zones — you need to understand how water moves across the land. Contour lines make that visible. They're the foundation of almost every design decision that involves earthworks.
So you'd think getting good contour data would be straightforward. It's not.
The weeks I lost to elevation data
When we bought our farm, the first thing I wanted was contour lines overlaid on an aerial image of the property. I wanted to see the shape of the land — where the ridges ran, where the water would naturally collect, which slopes faced north. Basic site analysis. The starting point for any design.
What I got instead was weeks of technical overhead.
First, I had to find where Australia's LiDAR data actually lives. Then I had to navigate the download interface — which is built for surveyors and GIS professionals, not designers. Then I had to figure out what file format I'd downloaded, what coordinate reference system it used, and how to process raw elevation data into contour lines. I ended up learning software I'd never heard of, just to extract the information I needed.
And then I had to figure out how to overlay those contours onto my aerial image in a way that was actually useful for design work.
None of that was design. None of it was observation. I wasn't thinking about where to place swales or how to manage water. I was troubleshooting coordinate systems and file formats. I was deep in technical process when I should have been deep in my landscape.
That experience is a big part of why Fieldwalker exists.
The resolution problem nobody warns you about
But there's a deeper problem than just the difficulty of sourcing contour data. It's the accuracy of what you end up with.
Most freely available global elevation datasets have a resolution of around 30 metres. That means each data point represents a 30-metre square of ground. The contour lines generated from that data are an approximation — they show the broad shape of the terrain, but they smooth over everything that happens within each 30-metre cell.
On a large broadacre property, that might be fine for a general overview. But if you're designing earthworks on a 2-acre block? Thirty-metre resolution could show flat ground where there's actually a meaningful slope. You'd place a swale based on those contour lines, build it, and discover that the water doesn't flow the way the contours told you it would.
This isn't an edge case. It's the default experience for most people trying to do contour-based design. The data they can access isn't accurate enough for the decisions they're trying to make. And most people don't even know that's the problem — they trust the contour lines because they don't realise what resolution means in practice.
Resolution isn't a technical detail. It determines whether your earthworks will actually function.
What should happen instead
Here's what I wanted that experience to be: type in my address, see my property, and have accurate contour lines already there. No portals, no downloads, no GIS processing. Just the information I need to start designing.
That's what Fieldwalker does.
You enter a location, and the tool automatically retrieves the best available elevation data for that area. In regions with high-resolution coverage — like much of Australia — that means 50-centimetre elevation data. That's sub-metre accuracy. Contour lines generated from that data are detailed enough to design earthworks with real confidence.
The contour interval is adjustable too. On a small suburban block, you might want contours every half a metre, because on a tight site every subtle change in grade matters. On a broadacre property, one metre or five-metre intervals give you the overview you need without visual clutter.
And the tool tells you what resolution you're working with. That transparency matters — because if you're placing a swale, you need to know whether the contour accuracy supports that decision or whether you should ground-truth on site first.
When the automatic data isn't enough
Elevation data coverage varies by region. Some countries have excellent high-resolution LiDAR programmes. Others have patchy coverage or only coarse global datasets.
Fieldwalker is upfront about this. You can always see what elevation source is driving your contour lines, and what resolution it's working at. If the automatic data isn't detailed enough for your design needs, there are options. We can try to source higher-resolution data for your area. And if you're in Victoria, we can come to your property with a drone and capture the elevation data directly — giving you the most accurate possible foundation for your design.
The point is that you shouldn't have to become a GIS specialist to understand the shape of your land. That knowledge should be accessible to anyone who wants to design thoughtfully — whether you're planning swales on your own backyard or laying out a whole-farm water management system.
Getting to the conversation that matters
Contours are the foundation. Once you can see the shape of the land clearly, the design conversation opens up. Where does the water want to go? Where can you slow it, spread it, store it? Which slopes catch the morning sun? Where does the grade allow vehicle access, and where is it too steep?
Those are the questions that matter. Those are the questions that permaculture design is built to answer. And you shouldn't have to spend weeks on data processing before you can even start asking them.
Fieldwalker gets you to that conversation in seconds instead of weeks. Because the shape of your land is the most important thing to understand — and understanding it shouldn't require anything more than typing an address.