I'm putting the finishing touches on our rapidly approaching trip to Australia & New Zealand. In trying to find driving directions for the driving portions of our itinerary, I've looked both on Google Maps and http://www.whereis.com. Although the directions are similar, they aren't identical. Does any one have experience with these two as to which is more accurate? We don't want to get lost, especially at night (we have a couple of after dark flight arrivals).

Just to be safe I've printed out both sets of instructions, but am really just wondering which is more accurate.

Thanks.

What do you need this kind of accuracy for? The rest of us manage very well with low definition paper maps.

Get a GPS system, much more convenient.

Agree with Cilla Tey; GPS navigators are brilliant, and give you turn by turn instructions. even tell you which lane you should be in. Cost is about $400 Aust. about $350 US. TomTom is good. (www.tomtom.com) good coverage of Australia, Europe & US. No maps of NZ available yet, so if you are intending to jump the ditch a NavMan is a better choice. (www.navman.com) They come pre loaded with 1 map, usually of the country you purchase the device in. Additoinal maps are around $200 each. One of these could save your marriage.

Thanks for the suggestions. My main concern is the difficulty I had finding paper maps, low definition or otherwise, for the areas we're planning on driving.

A GPS system sounds great, but I'm reluctant to spend the $$$ for a three week trip, although I appreciate the suggestion.

I've printed out both sets of instructions for each destination, hoping something will look familiar. We don't want to find ourselves wandering around Tasmania in the middle of the night, trying to find our way from the airport to our hotel.

The intention of my original post was to see whether one website gave better instructions than the other. I've used Mapquest before and, upon occasion, have found the directions to be almost useless.

Just be aware that some rental car agreements specifically say that your insurance doesn't cover you if you drive from sundown to sunup (this was true for us in Darwin area, don't know about other areas.) They do make road atlases of the different areas in Australia, we are thinking of getting one for the Cairns area. I just searched Amazon and got a lot of interesting looking ones for not much money. We got a Michelin one with a scale of 1:200,000 when we drove in France and it was quite helpful. Happy driving!
Sally in Seattle, still cold and overcast

See if you can get a rental car with GPS.

Hi nevermind,
I live in another state, my experience of driving through Tassie was to use use paper maps from RACV, the local automobile/driving association. You should be able to find an RACV shop pretty much everywhere. Try: http://www.racv.com.au/wps/wcm/conne...ps/?CACHE=NONE

They should also be able to give you other driving advice if you go see them.

Also, I've never tested them side by side but as a local I use whereis.