If there’s one app you need to download before you head out on your next adventure, it’s what3words. It could just save your life.

 

There are lots of ways to communicate location. Address, bearings, coordinates. But sometimes these are not accurate to our exact location, and one wrong number or calculation could throw the whole thing out. If you’re out in the bush and something goes wrong, miscommunicating where you are could lead to valuable time wasted. That’s where what3words comes in.

What the heck is what3words?

what3words is an app, but it’s also a new and simple way to locate people and places. 

Within the app, the world is divided up into 57 trillion blocks, all three metres square, with each block assigned a unique three word address that doesn’t appear anywhere else in the world. 

That means your bedroom, kitchen, backyard and your favourite spot to lie on the beach, each have their own unique three word code. That code can be shared with your mates, emergency services, even the guy from Marketplace who’s coming to buy your old tent, so they can quickly locate your exact position in the world. Oh, and it works offline too. Cool, huh? 

It’s as accurate as GPS coordinates, but a helluva lot easier to understand and communicate. Especially in a crisis, when panic levels are high and focus is low.

First Australian Rescue

The app’s already helping Aussie’s out of sticky situations in the bush. 

Earlier this year, bushwalker Cornelia Gratzer was leading a group of hikers on Tassie’s Flinders Island, when she fell and broke her leg. A few of the hikers headed off to find phone reception, but once they got a hold of emergency services, struggled to communicate their location and even where they’d started the hike.  

Instead, staff at Ambulance Tasmania sent them a link to the what3words app and the hikers read back the three words that pinpointed their location – murky founding spoonfuls – bingo!

Ms Gratzer was rescued within two hours.

This epic new way of pinpointing locations can be used for heaps of other stuff too. Imagine actually being able to find your mates in a crowd at a music festival? Revolutionary. 

If you haven’t yet, download the what3words app now – to find out the three word address of your bedroom if for nothing else.

See you at wispy froze specifically!

 

Feature photo by @jamie_humby