Geocaching Australia

Thwewife and I are visiting in August/September [/list]for our 50th Anniversary.Will be visiting :Brisbane,Sydney.Melbourne,Adelaide,Perth, Aliceand Ayers, Darwin, and Cairns, then off to New Zealand.
Like all visitors I am seeking a source of maps of these cities.This is to be our "tour of the cities", we will be back in December for the Santa train cross country and more time in less populated areas ie, Kalgorlie and the gold fields there abouts.
Any help availabe that can assist in getting city maps would be appreciated.

Wish I had known of geo-caching before retirement, I was here 10 or 12 times from 1982 to 1995. Now I get to revisit old friends and grab a few easy caches in each city. Back then I could walk well, now I am still struggling with replacement knees so easy caches up to about 2/2 are my general limit. Hopefully that will improve over thenext several months.
I welcome any emails, and will get back as quickly as I can.

Coinpopper

jayce5@verizon.net
or on the forum

AKA/// Jack Lowry
Garland, Texas

Free maps here:
http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

I have downloaded them when travelling in Asia and they are great but you can get them for all of Australia.
Instructions are in English even though it's a Dutch site.

coinpopper wrote:Wish I had known of geo-caching before retirement, I was here 10 or 12 times from 1982 to 1995.

Hi Coinpopper

Don't worry about the dates you were here, I did a round the world trip in 1997-98 and it hadn't been invented then. If it had I would have finds in Hawaii, mainland USA, Canada, UK, Canary Islands, France, Italy and Thailand. It didn't get going until after 2000 when the US switched selective availability off on their sats so civilian users could get better than about 150 metre accuracy.

I've managed France since then, but it's annoying to have visited those places I don't know if or when I will get back to and know I don't have a find.

Back on topic, like tronador I can recommended the Openstreetmap site, it works fine on my Garmin 60cx. I used it when in New Zealand last year, it shows most of the roads just fine to work out how to get to the cache, though I also used it in conjucntion with the NZ maps available for Oziexplorer to plan a run.

Alternatively there is this site too: http://www.osmaustralia.org/garmin.php

The maps here are updated slighty more often.

On a related subject - I was looking for some more detailed maps of sydney/blue mountains. I have a satmap which isn't really compatible with Australia (!) so would be willing to get a garmin - but looking at the website, the only maps are 1in100,000. This isn't really detailed enough, and neither is openstreetmap (as many paths are not shown). I guess what I really need is 1in 50k or 1in25k topo maps - do these exist for any gps device? Obviously I have paper copies, but find it easier to have on the gps as well for hiking/caching. Help!!

Sorry not really up on the maps stuff.

But we are going to the Mega in NZ if you will be there then?

Also would love to catch up when you are in Perth!