Geocaching Australia

Being still quite new to caching (just over a year) I am ready to update my GPS. I am interested in the Magellan Explorist 500. Does anyone have this and can provide feedback or recommend another GPS? I liked the feature of the geocache manager on the Magellan. At the moment, there are auite a few of these on eBay, but they are in the States. Has anyone purchased their GPSr's from the States and if so, what is involved to calibrate them to Australia? Sorry about all the questions, but I thought this would be the best place to come to have my queries answered!

This would have been best posted in the software/Hardware section for the best answers.
There is already a number of threads there on the various magellans as well + talk of imported units etc.

Double posting into the buy sell section really isnt needed or polite

Welcome to the forum.

Well it depends if you like Holdens or Fords. Holdens are Garmins and fords are magellans.
I know garmins from the US can be loaded with a free base map of OZ following the instructions from www.gpsoz.com.au however they are not very detailed as the system depends on people uploading their track logs to be placed on a map to show the roads and tracks. So If no one has traveled in the area of the cache then there might be no tracks on it. I use a tomotom aswell as a hand held GPS and a laptop with oziexplorer for the car and planing.
These combos work very well.
Happy hunting
Crisp Image

Sorry I am still new at this and I didn't think it posted the first time I did it. Later did I realise I was looking in the wrong forum.

Thank you for all your help, I did some further research and had a look at the Garmin. Now I just can't decide what to do! Reading some other posts I was unaware that only Garmin could download from geocaching.com and not Magellan. I was impressed by geocache manager on the Magellan. I have since found that Garmin have it too.

Does anyone have this feature and find it worthwhile?
Thanks again!

NO harm done, and welcome to the forums.

It is very hard to pick between Garmin & Magellan. Have you gone to a decent GPS shop and played (touched) both yet? That may help to make a decision as they are very different in feel and operation.

Good luck with it!

Garmin is the only one that can directly download from the cache page into your unit - and this is with select units. You would only use this feature if you saw a cache and decided to quickly get it.

A number of geocachers use a database such as GSAK or MacCaching. They use this to store geocache waypoints they have downloaded. They can do this one by one (as above) or as a GPX file. The GPX file stores a number of geocaches waypoints in the one file. There are a number of ways of obtaining this.

The main difference I have noticed btw the two companies is that Magellan has better commercial maps, but Garmin is easier to upload user-generated maps. Garmin also appears to have closer ties with Groundspeak (the owners of Geocaching.com).

In the end, it really is a case of Holden or Ford - of course there are Volkswagens, Toyotas and Hyundais.

Holden GPSMap60CSX


Loaded Tracks4Australia and OpenStreetmap

Custom POI from GSAK

My advice is to buy locally or where your can get quick service IF you ever have any problem with your GPS.
We did and had excellent free replacement of a part and fast service when needed.
If you are a caching nut - to be a long time without your GPS - I imagine would be really sad, bad and cause me to say a few swear words! especially if a new cache had just come out.

Hello Garmin have caught up in the commecial map department with release of OzTopoV2 (though not a genuine Garmin product). Basically equivalent to Magellans version (DAST Topo) so maps are no longer deciding factor... Though strangely people persist in using Mapping GPS units and the "free" basic maps - suggests detailed maps are not that important to some.

Cheers
Greg