The text suggests local is needed for the random walk, but this query without it (and a spurious by step) appears to work also:

// Random walk with five hops
g.V().has('code','AUS').repeat(bothE('route').
      sample(1).otherV()).times(5).
      path().by('code').by('dist')

I don't understand what bearing local has on this query. If local is removed from the example, some of the explanation before this example also needs attention.