Hey all you down under geocachers. One thing I forgot to check out are maps for my Garmin Oregon - I was told I can find free maps for these online but I don't know where. I got one for Melbourne but I need maps for Cairns and the GBReef, Sydney, Adelaide and Kangaroo Island. Otherwise I won't be able to cache with my Oregon. HELP? I leave in two days. YIKES

Thanks,
Kite

Hopefully this will help:

http://www.osmaustralia.org/garmin.php

OSM are fine for the urban areas, but for the more remote areas, this is probably better:

http://shonkylogic.net/shonkymaps/

We use them both, and they've served 95% of our needs to date.

Thanks for the ideas - I've checked it out - I do'nt quite know how to get them to WORK on my Oregon but I can't exactly test it either. THey are loaded to the place it says they need to be. "Preciate the help.

-Kite

I have OSM on my garmin Oregon and they are perfect. I downloaded the file from the OSM web site noted here. For example, I clicked on "download" under the word Queensland and saved it to my C drive. The file had a name QLD.img and it was a winzip file and then the filename was something like 610501.img

I copied this file to my gps which came up as the F drive and put it on the directory "Garmin". I have also put some other state maps on the removeable chip which is G:Garmin and they work really whell too.

To check if the maps are ok, I go to "find a geocache" and select a cache I know is in the area I'm trying to check. If I look at a zoomed out level, not much is visible but when I zoom in, all the streets come up and i can see it's all ok.

Have a go and tell us what you see

Yup, I was 1670km from home today (on a day trip - sheesh) and the OSM maps I had loaded on the Vista worked fine to find a couple. Which reminds me, better make sure I have the Hobart ones loaded in for next week. Or just use the iPhone to get close and follow the arrow on the Vista.

Most GPS's will hold the whole country.
http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

Of course in the early days maps weren't needed. We just used to follow the arrow and try to work out which road got us in the right direction We are a bit spoilt these days.

Thanks - I got this as well.