Not so Shonky Maps for the GPS

I’ve been playing with the free Shonkymaps for the new GPS. Basically it goes like this: the GPS only comes with very basic maps.  Just the ‘big picture’ stuff, no street names, mountain names, height information (topographic data) etc.

You can buy commercial maps and load them into your GPS. Actually you load sections of them in, for the area of interest.

…or some kind souls create ones for them – and us – to use.

On example being ShonkyMaps (the name is the users account name, not a reflection on the quality; “shonky” being Austrlaian slang for something a bit dodgy or not quite legal or legitimate.)   The best way to describe it is from the author themselves:

Shonkymaps are a set of unofficial Garmin compatible topographic maps that cover the whole of Australia.  The author was not satisfied with the Garmin base map that came with the Garmin gps, and at the time there were no other topographic products either official or unofficial.  He created his own set of downloadable topographic maps as a hobby / labour of love.

That quote – and the maps themselves – are from the Shonkymaps web site. I won’t go into detail on how to get the to work (it was VERY easy), but work they do.

Something went astray with my usage on the recent Mt Macedon walk, the map layer(?) seemed to vanish, but I’ll look into that. I could have pushed the wrong button or clicked on the wrong menu. The waypoints and log/track were still visible. Strange.

Anyway hats off to Shonky for a great job. The amount of detail is fantastic.