About Us

I.T. Beyond Pty Ltd. (www.itbeyond.com.au) is the parent company that operates ExplorOz. We are a small private family run business owned by David and Michelle Martin. Our office is in Perth, Western Australia, or "somewhere else" in Australia when we are away testing/travelling.

Contact Details

Location

We do not confine our workplace to a fixed office and are sometimes working on the road travelling around Australia conducting mapping uodates and promoting ExplorOz. We use StarLink to ensure we stay reachable even if we're in the remote Australian outback. *Jan 2024: NSW

Phone:

0491 137 247
We prefer talking to our customers by phone so please try calling us first. If you need to leave a message we will call you back asap.

Help Desk:

Help Desk Portal Our Help Desk is just like email but blocks spam. It also ensures we can offer you the most effective correspondence tracking.

Company Profile

Despite our micro-business size we operate a progressive and modern company with a multifaceted profile consisting of service-based clients together with the operation of a subsidiary business “ExplorOz”.

I.T. Beyond is built upon the knowledge and skill set of its Managing Director - David Martin who has extensive experience in hardware infrastructure design, cyber security, software development, and corporate consulting. David began his career with an Electronic Engineering background and has spent over 35 years actively immersed in the rapidly evolving business world and has specialised in internet application development for the past 22 years.

ExplorOz.com was created in the year 2000. As committed outdoor enthusiasts, with extensive outback 4WD experience, David and Michelle recognised a need for an online information resource & community for 4WD & RV enthusiasts and built the website based on their own personal interests and experiences and together with community input the site evolved into a unique source of services for this niche interest group. Please read Our Story in the section below.

Our major product is the EOTopo mapset, together with the ExplorOz Traveller app and ExplorOz Tracker app. EOTopo maps first became available to download from the ExplorOz website in 2013. The map was built using the standard raster map file formats required for use in the popular mapping software programs of the time (ECW, OZF). These programs are only suitable for Windows or Android devices but there was significant demand in the market for EOTopo maps to be compatible with iOS, which eventuated in the release of our own app, ExplorOz Traveller which offers cross-platform compatibility so when it was finally released in 2016, our customers could access EOTopo maps from any Android, iPad/iPhone, or Windows 10 via the Traveller app. The ExplorOz Traveller app is fully Australian-made and developed by I.T. Beyond Pty Ltd.

Being a tech business we are able to stay abreast of the continually evolving and adapting needs of market. Our products and services are are a continual work in progress as we update and add new features.

We are also available for bespoke development of apps based on the software of the Traveller & Tracker app to suit industry or small business applications outside the industry in which we choose to target our product. Our most recent project for example, was to develop the Hunt NSW app for compliance of permit holders undertaking hunting activities in State Forests (NSW).

  • We are an Australian micro-business operating in Perth, Western Australia.
  • We support our customers directly. When you deal with us via our Help Desk, you are dealing direct with the business owner (David & Michelle Martin) for concise & accurate support.
  • We do not use any external developers in the creation/update of our products.

About Us - The ExplorOz Story

***************We now have a Podcast*********************
Listen in on Spotify, or your favourite podcast platform. Episodes 1, 2, 3 launched October 2023 tell the ExplorOz Story. Join us for captivating stories, expert advice, and insider tips on 4WDing, camping, hiking, and more across Australia. You can also watch the podcast on our YouTube channel.

The ExplorOz story began after a 2 year stint travelling around Australia before we had our 2 kids. We did the "big lap" in the 1990s when we were in our 20's with a 75 series "troopy" and custom-built O'Briens off road butterfly trailer. In those days, only retired people seemed to be on the road and we were the "blond nomads" raising a lot of eyebrows. We were out there because we needed a change from a city rat race work life that was killing us. In fact, David vowed to not stop travelling until he could find a way to make a living without computers..... (well, that didn't work out clearly!).

We had both been born & raised in Sydney, and had developed our own careers and living experiences but we were seeking a change after David was diagnosed and treated with lymphatic cancer. We both had spent time living/working in rural areas as well as well as the city and had enjoyed many sports and adventurous pursuits. David had earlier successfully completed a solo unassisted 28 day hiking adventure from Kathmandu to Everest Base Camp and whilst he didn't wish to climb Mt Everest, he did climb Gokyo Ri, and Kala Patthar which are the top view points in the region. We both scuba dived extensively and achieved 8 certifications (Open Water, Advanced, Deep, Navigation, Rescue, Dive Supervisor, Master Diver, Assistant Instructor) as well as doing many deep wreck dives including the President Coolidge in Santo, Vanuatu before our around Australia trip and our trailer was packed with dive tanks and gear to ensure we could take advantage of any opportunities. We also had windsurfing gear on top of the trailer.

Whilst some of the highlights of our trip included a week on the Rum Runner liveaboard dive boat out of Cairns where we went to the Coral Sea and dived with a 5m giant hammerhead, and diving in the incredible freshwater abyss of Ewens Ponds in Mt Gambier, we actually found an affinity with the desert regions of Australia and changed our setup after the first 9 months to take the water sports gear off the trailer. We always preferred to sleep on the ground in swags and keep it all simple and the deserts offered us the ability to extend our trip by another year as most of our overnight stays were free.

It was during our desert exploration phase that we connected with outback communities in the Diamantina Shire and discovered that there was a disparity between the needs of the outback communities and their small tourism businesses and the expectation of the travellers planning their trips. By engaging with the local businesses we learned that they wanted to see information reach the travellers to help them plan their trips better and to help them gain trust in using local services when they arrived to restock their food supplies etc. It was through their encouragement that we started ExplorOz as the bridge of communication between outback business service providers and locals and the travellers.

In our formative years, no one even had mobile internet or smartphones/tablets - Google didn't even exist. However, it wasn't hard to speculate the potential for technological change and how we could utilise that to realise our vision for ExplorOz. So in March of 2000 - when the internet giants such as the likes of Google and Facebook didn't even exist and when you had to use a dial up connection to get an internet service, we launched our online business.

It's been a long journey that has seen us work from home for 22 years - raise our family of 2 kids, change a few vehicles, trailers, boats etc and evolve our business through the challenges of many technology evolutions, and economic impacts such as the GFC, and COVID-19.

Throughout the first 13 years of the 2000's the ExplorOz website was the largest online digital map shop in Australia selling all the popular products of the time, including Magellan, Garmin, OziExplorer, TrackRanger, Hema, Westprint, SPOT, InReach, GeoScience and also digital maps from smaller publishers such as Gold & Ghosts, Meridian, and others. Our relationships and connections in the industry have been vast over a very long term.

At the same time, we started creating our own map product and published it online in a free online viewing tool called iMapPlot. We also designed a tracking service for Members, and a trip planning tool, POI database, Treks database, and file sharing services.

Eventually, due to customer demand our maps became available for download as raster maps with the first edition of EOTopo in 2013. These maps were very popular with OziExplorer, Track Ranger, MudMap and Memory-Map users but could not be used on Apple devices. In 2016, we produced ExplorOz Traveller our own GPS Navigation app to support our EOTopo map products with compatibility for all platforms - Apple, Android & Window 10. The EOTopo project was designed to be an ongoing work in progress so new editions featuring major improvements and mapping updates have been released. The current 2023 Edition of EOTopo is a vector mapset and is proprietary to our Traveller app.

Our ExplorOz Traveller app is now the leading premium Navigation & Mapping app in the Australian app stores.

Social Media

Join us as we showcase highlights of our 2024 journey around Australia through short 5-minute videos on our YouTube channel.

Or maybe you'd prefer to follow our stories, reels and posts on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

We also highly recommend you jump into our dedicated ExplorOz Traveller user group on Facebook too.

And finally, we publish regular podcasts on Spotify (and other streaming platforms). Add us to your rotation for regular audio listening.

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Who Owns Exploroz, Australian Small Business

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