Google Maps adds address search for Australia and New Zealand

Google Maps has added the long awaited address searching for the countries of Australia and New Zealand making the previous released street maps (on May 18th) even more useful. When Google released this map data for Australia and New Zealand the maps could only be browsed, but not searched by address. Now this is possible. Local business search and driving directions do not yet appear to be working.

Example (Australia): 5 Lowanna Place Hornsby, New South Wales 2077 Australia

Example (New Zealand): 20 Holly Rd, St Albans, Christchurch, New Zealand

This might also pave the way for Australia and New Zealand geocoding support within the Google Maps API and more mashups from these countries!

Update: Sept.7/06 6:41AM: As expected the folks at Google have announced geocoding support for Australia and New Zealand over on the Google Maps API Blog!

Related:
Australia Google Maps Mashup Roundup
New Zealand Google Maps Mashup Roundup Part 1 --> Part 2

[Thanks to Ed Groenendaal for the tip!]