Extract from ABC News
Street directories have defied expectations, lasting longer than publishers expected. (ABC Gold Coast: Dominic Cansdale)
In short:
Australia's street directories are still selling despite the rise of GPS.
Hardie Grant, which publishes UBD Gregory's and Refidex, says sales have fallen to less than 20 per cent of their peak.
What's next?
Hardie Grant says while it will continue to publish street directories, annual updates will be a thing of the past.
Australia's street directories — the maps once ubiquitous beneath car seats, in glove boxes and on reluctant navigators' laps — will no longer be updated every year, according to the publisher behind some of the country's best-known map brands.
Sandy Grant, chairman of Hardie Grant Publishers, which owns UBD Gregory's and Refidex, said the directories had defied expectations for years, but that resilience had reached its limit.
"We're right at the very end of their life span," he said.
"We'll keep them available, but we just can't have teams updating on the same cycles; it's just not possible anymore."
However, he said the directories had maintained a surprisingly loyal customer base.
"We expected them to die a decade ago; they just haven't," Mr Grant said.
"There is still a pretty strong cohort. I'd have to say it's mainly older men."
He said many of those customers kept a directory as a backup for when phone batteries died, coverage dropped out, or a digital map got it wrong.
Teams of up to 40 cartographers used to work on street directory updates. (Supplied: Hardie Grant)
Sales have fallen sharply from a peak of around 250,000 copies a year in the 1970s and '80s, with directories now selling less than 20 per cent of that volume, according to Mr Grant.
The number of specialists working on the books has also shrunk dramatically.
Cartographers still update the directories, working with local planning authorities to track new developments and road changes.
"There used to be probably 25 to 40 cartographers," Mr Grant said. "It was down to two at the last edition."
When the network goes down
Last week's Telstra outage, which left delivery drivers and commuters unable to navigate, was a stark reminder of how dependent Australians have become on technology, according to associate professor Grant Blashki from the University of Melbourne.
"We're so dependent on the technology, the world just stops when something goes down," he said.
Dr Blashki said there was growing evidence that relying on GPS specifically could come at a cost, due to what he called "cognitive offloading".
"There is evidence that GPS use is linked to having a worse sense of direction and less environmental knowledge," he said.
"We pretty much delegate the navigation over to the little GPS and then our brains don't bother."
Grant Blashki says there is growing evidence that relying on GPS comes at a cost. (Supplied)
While Dr Blashki is not against GPS use, he recommends switching it off occasionally.
"Sometimes what I would recommend is put away the phone and go, 'This is a short trip, I can work this out in my head,'" he said.
Emergency services still rely on them
Mr Grant said a rumour last year that Perth's street directory would stop being published sparked concern from emergency services.
"The first people to ring us, literally within hours, were Emergency Services Western Australia saying, 'This can't be true, we have to have them'," he said.
"They can't go down a track that Google hasn't mapped properly and fail to get to the fire."
Old directories also help developers and environmental consultants check what once stood on a site. (Supplied: Hardie Grant)
More than nostalgia
The directories also serve as a record of Australia's urban history.
Mr Grant said old UBD business directories, which listed businesses at specific addresses, were still consulted by developers and environmental consultants checking what once stood on a site.
"If there was an old petrol station or something involved in chemicals, you can't quickly just go and put a house on it," he said.
"We often have people wanting our data back to the 1940s to find out what was on certain sites."
Sandy Grant estimates that at their peak, more than a quarter of a million copies were sold annually across the country. (ABC God Coast: Mark Rigby)
Drawing the directory by hand
Gold Coast resident David Lawler spent around 15 years as a cartographer through the late 1970s and 1980s at Gregory's and UBD.
"Everything was hand-drawn on bigger templates and then photographed and reduced down to fit the format," he said.
He still has an old UBD directory somewhere at home "falling apart" but admits he would never think to reach for it now.
"What we've got on our phones these days has made it obsolete."
David Lawler spent around 15 years as a cartographer. (ABC News)
Charm of analogue versions
For many Australians, the directories bring back memories of navigating with books perched precariously on steering wheels or a passenger having to turn a map upside down to work out where they were going.
But Dr Blashki believes the appeal of the printed directory has room to grow as AI becomes further entrenched in our daily lives.
"I think that many of us in a very AI-dominated world are going to be attracted to the charm of the analogue," he said.
"There's something very charming about flipping through the pages of a street directory, and it's my prediction we're going to see a lot of popularity of people still wanting to use old-style ways of navigating."
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