Geocaching Australia

Can anyone give me some information on Garmin's Mapsource Australia CD. I haven't seen many comments made about it, but one referred to it being inaccurate. It seems to be a lot of money to spend (and waste) if it's not very good. Thanks in advance?

hmm. i'd be interested in a joint purchase.. will cut costs in half I havent seen it in action myself but it looks fairly good Amazinglt handy for caching.

There are no topographical features to speak of. It looks a lot like a street directory with black lines as streets on a grey background.
Its main strength is the ability to find a property location by street number and no map joins to worry about. Around my area it seems pretty accurate, there are a couple of streets it doesn't have and it has a couple of streets the earth doesn't. At least one street is incorrectly named.
You need to input an unlock code to use it and it will load the maps to a total of 2 different mapping GPSrs (it checks the serial numbers). If you have a mapping GPSr it is useful (and sometimes a tax deduction), otherwise something like OziExplorer and a set of whereis maps is a better option.
I still print out the whereis map from Oziexplorer if I am not sure of the area as the larger map is easier to look at.
The next street display is good in areas where the street signs are missing or hidden in the undergrowth. I have on a few occasions plotted a route, uploaded it to the GPSr and followed it to my destination

It is possible for Garmin Gpsr units to work around this. I have downloaded the GIS shapefiles from Geoscience Australia (http://www.ga.gov.au/bin/mapserv36?map= ... ap_gaz_y=0), run it through mapedit088b (http://kgy.narod.ru/util/mapedit/mapedit_e.htm), save as Polish text, run that through GPSmap (http://kgy.narod.ru/util/mapedit/mapedit_e.htm) to convert to a .img file and then used sendmap.exe (same website as last one) to load it to the unit.

Time consuming and takes work, but it's free and works quite good. I can now see where hills, roads and streams are in relation to waypoints.

Currently putting together a decent map of Canberra and surrounds for myself (naming some roads and regions). Happy to provide when finished and swap maps of other regions with others.

Simple isn't it