Search Tips
To perform a search, type what you are looking for into the search box: Put phrases in "" to be more specific. Try to avoid words like "and" and "the" as this will bring up too many hits. As will any of the words used in page titles or the links on the left. If you type in <conservation> this will bring up every page on our site as this word is part of the design of every page (see black strip above). We are working on this and will eventually turn all the titles and links into images, thus solving the problem. If nothing matches, use the "back" button on your Browser to return to your starting point.

To get more specific search results, try using the following tips:

Check spelling
Make sure your search terms are spelled correctly. The search engine will attempt to find words that sound similar to your search terms, but it is always best to try to spell the search terms correctly.

Use multiple words
Use multiple words when performing your search. The search results will return more refined results from several words than from a single word.

Use similar words
The more similar words you use in a search, the more relevant results you will get back.

Use appropriate capitalisation
Capitalise proper nouns. Lowercase words will match any case.

Use quotation marks
Use quotation marks to find words which must appear adjacent to each other, for example, "camp dates." Otherwise, the search results will include the word "camp" and the word "dates", but not necessarily in that order. The words may appear anywhere, and in any order, within the document.

Use plus (+) or minus (-)
Use a plus sign when your search term or phrase must appear in the search results. Use a minus sign to indicate undesirable term(s). The plus sign tells the search engine that a certain word or phrase is required in the search results, and a minus sign indicates that a word or phrase must be absent in the search results.

Note: A phrase must be contained within quotation marks. Leave no spaces between the plus or minus sign and the term.

Use wildcards
Wildcard searches can expand the number of matches for a particular request. The * character is used as the wildcard character.

Wildcards may be combined with the standard plus (+) and minus (-) modifiers, quotes for phrases, as well as the field search specifiers.
+wh* -se*ch will find all pages which have a word that starts with wh and which does not contain a word that starts with se and ends with ch.

"wh* are" will find the phrases where are, what are, why are, etc.