Bushwalk Australia

Good Morning All, I am just getting back into walking after an 8 year break. However I now find myself in the situation where I will be walking alone on some trails. My husband has brought me a PLB and a GARMINMAPS 64 so I hopefully don't get lost. The trails I am following are all National Parks NSW trails but I need the map coordinates/waypoints to put into my GPS.

I emailed National Parks and they said they cannot help me with these but the tracks will have some signage. Truthfully I am not great with direction and want to be prepared. My son who has just graduated as a soldier in the Army says he will teach me how to read a topographic map and compass next time he is home but I would like to do a few short walks in the meantime. All the walks I am doing are day walks. I am hoping some of you may be able to give me some advice re this.

The Garminmaps 64 takes a micro sd card so I guess I can dowload maps ?? sorry I am so untechnical
Many thanks

Hi KD,
Hope you enjoy getting back into bushwalking!

I can't really help you with the GPS problem, but were are you walking? Depending on where it is (and others will probably disagree with me on this), you'll likely be fine heading off on your own and relying on signs to get you back. But be careful, and pay attention to where you've been, so that you can backtrack if necessary.

With topo maps, there's guides online about how to use them. I'd definitely encourage you to have a shot at using one yourself on a walk to get the feel of them! Some pointers about topo maps for NSW:
- The maps usually used for bushwalking have a scale of 1:25,000, published by the LPI
- You can browse them online here: http://maps.six.nsw.gov.au (click basemaps, then looking for 1943 imagery, select topo maps (current), then click on the topo maps (current) box to activate the maps)
- Frequently you can get the paper maps from local visitor's centres
- Each box on the topo maps is 1km by 1km, and 1.4km diagonally across
- The pinkish lines across the map all connect areas of equal height, so you can visualise (with practise) what the terrain looks like... It's good practise to get a topo map and go to a lookout and sit down for a while connecting features on the map to those in the landscape (and the other way around too)
- The closer together the pinkish lines are, the steeper the terrain is. The map will have a 'contour interval', or how far apart the lines are vertically. In the 1:25k NSW maps, it's usually 10m, but sometimes 20m
- Topo maps aren't intuitive at first, but with practise you'll get used to them!

With the GPS, does it have any default basemaps? If it does, you can find the track you want on the GPS hopefully. The GPS should have a feature to manually add waypoints, and you can put them along the track you're planning to walk. If you have the GPS recording a track of where you've walked, that should help you get back to where you need to be if you get lost on a daywalk.

Most of the tracks in NSW NPs have been recorded on OSM (OpenStreetMap.org) and these can be downloaded from the link site below. The mapping file can then be transferred onto your Garmin GPS and visualised. Of course, there are a few steps involved, including the location where the file is to be copied but these are all readily available information either here on past threads or a good Google.

http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl

With OSM maps on your Garmin, it's easy to monitor your progress based on the unit while you walk. Of course, some track records can be out of date or inaccurate, you should double check and compare with alternate map or aerial imaging to ensure accuracy and know potential errors. Otherwise, the data is pretty good for most common tracks.

Thank you both so much ! Great information for me to get started with. I really appreciate the time you guys took to answer me so thoroughly

Feel free to ask for additional clarifications. It's really not that difficult once you've been through the procedure.

An alternate very quick way to install NSW OSM maps is to use Andrewp's compile. Download, copy directly to the microSD card and use. The advantage is that it's compiled for bushwalks specifically but won't have the latest OSM updates until Andrewp updates them.

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=14234&start=150
http://tiny.cc/osm-maps