I spent more time thinking about whether we call these things sleeping pads or sleeping mats than actually writing the article, silly I know. In books, the term sleeping mat is much more popular than sleeping pad. On websites worldwide and in Australia there’s a close match. In Google search term used in Australia term sleeping mat is usually used. Worldwide and in the USA sleeping pad is found more often. I am a fan of using the term bushwalking rather than hiking in Australia, but for a bit of gear like this I am not so attached. For this article I have run with the term sleeping mat. I feel it is more self explanatory and a term we are more used to.
A weird side note – worldwide the searching of information about sleeping pads and mats seems to happen much more in the country’s summer time. This is much more pronounced then searching for hiking, bushwalking, and tramping etc. I wonder if people are more likely to buy gear in summer? I digress.