Magellan gps units from the states

they have USA basemap, which you should change.

magellan will charge you $300 for this.. or you can attempt to find it on the web, it used to be everywhere.

A GPS from the US will be "ready to use" in Australia. That is, once you take it out of the box and turn it on, and go through a bit of an initialization process to tell it it is in the southern hemisphere etc, it will work. It will tell you your location (lat/long or grid reference), speed, direction, elevation and many other bits of information, but what it won't do is show you where you are on an on-screen map, because it won't have any Australian maps in it. If you have paper maps, you can work out where you are on the map by using the grid reference location given by the GPS. But one of the big advantages of a GPS is the on-screen moving maps. So, yes, the unit will work, but until you get the AU maps, such as DiscoverAus, you won't be able to utilise some of the cool features of the unit. I bought a Magellan Meridian Color from the US several years ago, and now have quite a collection of Australian maps. Be warned- it can get a bit addictive/geeky to know exactly where you are at any point in time! Cheers

MikeyS

Rather than muck about with them overseas units why not just check this little beauty out , I love mine

www.ja-gps.com.au/garmin_quest_1.html

Doug

I agree, go the Quest from Garmin. Gives you both Turn by Turn mapping and proper GPS functionality. $849.00 at Site Link

I have had mine now for about 6 months and love it, had a eXplorist 500 before that, Topo was great... but the rumour is (and it has been out there for a while, WhereIs and Garmin will have Topo soon).

Only prob is it only has 250mb approx on board memory, not SD Cards like the Magellan.

Roger

I just checked the price for City Navigator 6 ,$349.00 , I don't know if you read all of the Quest Info but the track recorded is for over 4000 klm, every turn and bend in the road/track or off road .Plus Quest comes pre-installed, the CD you get is the same as whats installed, but the beauty with this is you install it to you PC and work out routes and make waypoints and then upload them to the Unit or download from the unit . below is a small demo of some of the info from tracks recorded from my Unit , They are from my crossing of Lake Poeppel at Easter .As you can see it records every few hundred meters with speed,altitude,course,date,time,and co-ords, It is truly an amazing little GPS, some have told me they think the screen is to small and thus the text is too small but if they explore the unit they will find they could make the text for different features from small, medium to large,They tend to go for the bigger Garmin 2610 but it don't have the track-Back and Track Record as the Quest,It also won't stay where Truckies put it ,The Quest sticks to my Windscreen and won't move even on Corrugation, ,just make sure the bottom is sitting down firmly on the Dash, sometimes it has let go but all one has to do is moisten the suction pad and put it back ,that happens rarely. I find it useful to work out how far places are and make a route on the PC then upload it into the GPS ,once finished that trip it can be saved on the PC for future use ,

133 4/15/2006 6:28:50 AM 12 m 102 m 0:00:17 22 kph 269° true S26 00.253 E138 00.041
134 4/15/2006 6:29:07 AM 11 m 70 m 0:00:16 16 kph 269° true S26 00.254 E137 59.980
135 4/15/2006 6:29:23 AM 11 m 4 m 0:00:18 0.9 kph 269° true S26 00.255 E137 59.939
136 4/15/2006 6:29:41 AM 12 m 31 m 0:02:04 0.9 kph 266° true S26 00.255 E137 59.936
137 4/15/2006 6:31:45 AM 11 m 113 m 0:00:20 20 kph 266° true S26 00.256 E137 59.918
138 4/15/2006 6:32:05 AM 12 m 125 m 0:00:23 20 kph 261° true S26 00.261 E137 59.850
139 4/15/2006 6:32:28 AM 13 m 60 m 0:00:35 6 kph 260° true S26 00.271 E137 59.776
140 4/15/2006 6:33:03 AM 12 m 151 m 0:01:10 8 kph 264° true S26 00.277 E137 59.741
141 4/15/2006 6:34:13 AM 12 m 78 m 0:00:16 17 kph 266° true S26 00.286 E137 59.651

Doug