Street Directories Are Ending

By Gemma Sapwell

ABC Gold Coast

Book Publishing Industry

Sunday, 19 July 2026, 6:18 am

Street directories have lasted longer than expected.

In short:

Australia's street directories are still selling despite GPS.

Hardie Grant says sales have fallen to less than 20% of their peak.

What's next?

Hardie Grant will keep publishing street directories, but not every year.

Australia's street directories will no longer be updated every year.

Sandy Grant said the directories had defied expectations, but that's ending.

We're at the end of their life span, he said.

We'll keep them, but we can't update them like before.

The directories still have a loyal customer base.

We expected them to stop selling a decade ago, but they haven't.

There's still a strong group of customers, mainly older men.

Many customers keep a directory as a backup for when phones die.

Teams of up to 40 cartographers used to work on updates.

Sales have fallen sharply from a peak of around 250,000 copies a year.

The number of specialists working on the books has shrunk.

Cartographers still update the directories with local planning authorities.

There used to be 25 to 40 cartographers, now it's down to two.

When the network goes down

Last week's Telstra outage showed how dependent Australians are on technology.

We're so dependent on technology, the world stops when it fails.

Relying on GPS can come at a cost, due to cognitive offloading.

GPS use is linked to having a worse sense of direction.

We delegate navigation to GPS, and our brains don't bother.

Grant Blashki says relying on GPS comes at a cost.

Dr Blashki recommends switching off GPS occasionally.

Put away the phone and navigate in your head, he said.

Emergency services still rely on street directories.

A rumour that Perth's directory would stop sparked concern from emergency services.

Emergency services need directories to get to places Google hasn't mapped.

Old directories help developers and environmental consultants check site history.

More than nostalgia

The directories serve as a record of Australia's urban history.

Old business directories are still consulted by developers and consultants.

If there was an old petrol station, you can't just build a house on it.

People want our data back to the 1940s to find out what was on sites.

Sandy Grant estimates that over a quarter of a million copies were sold annually.

Drawing the directory by hand

David Lawler spent 15 years as a cartographer in the 1970s and 1980s.

Everything was hand-drawn on templates and then photographed.

He still has an old UBD directory, but it's obsolete now.

What we have on our phones has made directories obsolete.

David Lawler spent 15 years as a cartographer.

Charm of analogue versions

For many Australians, directories bring back memories of navigating with books.

Dr Blashki believes the appeal of printed directories will grow as AI dominates.

There's something charming about flipping through a street directory.

Sunday, 19 July 2026, 6:18 am

Sunday, 19 July 2026, 7:59 am

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