Garmin GPS Map options

Commercial Products

Oztopo

Garmin TOPO Australia

CAMPS AUSTRALIA WIDE 5 POIs

Freebies

Shonkymaps

Tracks for Australia (T4A)

OSM

Mountainbike, Bicycle, Hiking and Foot maps based on osm

Contours

Difficult to say what would best suit you needs. Would suggest starting with the freebies plus maybe the Camps 5 POI and see how you go.

Cheers
Greg

Any Garmin Nuvi will give you petrol stations on the standard map.

I have a Nuvi 250 and the Garmin topo maps.
Apart from a few "glitches" which I think may be related to the HEMA map input being old.(eg showed me driving off road on the Plenty Hwy for miles), I have been very happy with it.

However the Oregon is more a walking etc GPS is it not?.
One would think a NUVI would be more suitable as it has detail of petrol stations , accommodation blah blah blah incorporated.

Philip A

I was mainly thing of camping sites and petrol station in the outback, i assumed somthing called a 'city navigator' would be kinda pointless 1000's of kms from a large city?

i had a look at the write ups of Garmin TOPO & OZtopo here:

http://www.octapc.com.au/prod5.htm
http://www.octapc.com.au/prod500.htm


It seems the Garmin TOPO has the campsites & petrol stations i was looking for like a hema map, but with 20m contours, Whilst the OZtopo has 10m contors with "thousands of points of intrest" - i rang the guy from OZtopo, he said it didnt have campsites & petrol stations, seems to contradict the website, can anyone who uses it confrim?

However i get the impression the OZtopo has more detail in terms of 4wd tracks over the Garmin TOPO, so i guess id be leaning towards that the case...
but i'll have to mannually program in the petrol stations, etc

& i'm not sure, but can you load both at the same time (it seems to imply you can on the OZtopo desription)

In the Nuvis and I would assume the Oregon, you choose the map from the on screen menu by ticking the one you want to use.
BTW City Navigator has just about every sealed road and gravel road in Australia on it . I use City navigator a lot of the time even on the highway.
It found the Shell in Bateman's Bay for me last week!!!and without it I wouldn't have had a chance.

Garmin Topo has many many tracks on it eg some old roads which are now closed on Cape Leveque since the top 200Km has been realigned, all of the tracks off the Plenty were on the map. Who can say whether Oz Topo has more?

I found all the tracks around the 6 foot track when looking for a way in to the campsite, but do you think I could convince the Nuvi to go by my preferred route, even by putting in waypoints.

IMHO the 10 vs 20 contour is not a big deal . I run about 50 detail as the screen can get awfully cluttered and on a small screen it will be worse. Maybe more important while walking. You can choose the detail on a Nuvi.
Regards Philip A

Hi Rich
You can buy a DVD for $5 from Ocapc that has the includes the following:

ShonkyMaps 3.51 - Topo map based on the Geoscience NatMap Raster map at 1:250k scale.

Tracks4Australia 1.2 free version - As above but less data

Contours Australia 3.0 - 5 metre intervals

New Zealand auto-routing Street Navigation map - fully fledged street navigation software

Malaysia & Singapore auto-routing Street Navigation map - fully fledged street navigation software

Points of interest - of Australia

Open Street Map data - of Australia but can only be installed onto a datacard in a folder called Garmin. Not viewable in Mapsource or on a PC.

Read me file on how to install programs and maps

Video clip on how to install maps from PC to GPS or data

You can get it from here.

Cheers
Neil

For anyone whos intrested, i've noticed that the OZtopo is 1:25k & the Garmin TOPO is 1:100k.

Although i think Garmin TOPO has better features & looks a little nicer, i'm going to go with OZtopo for the reason above. I will also use the free Contours program with it & put in user POI's before a trip so i know where the camp spots & petrol stations are.

So end result is 1:25k map with 3m contours - the only pain is pre-programing the POI's i'm intrested in. - Should be a good setup for both Driving and walking. Now i just need the bloody GPS to arrive.

Rich