Geocoding Australian Postcodes

Posted At : 25 March 2007 16:45 | Posted By : Duncan Loxton
Related Categories: Technology

A recent project has required the latitude and longitude and geographical coordinates of all of the Australian postcodes. This data doesn't seem to be freely available anywhere, however the Australian Post office maintains a csv file of all the postcodes and make it available from Auspost.com.au in the form of the Postcode Datafile.

We took this, put it in a database and looped over it using Googles geocoding service to lookup a coordinate for each and every entry - that's 16,079 to you and me.

Of all these 16079 Google couldn't get a result for 647 of them, mostly I believe because they are post office sorting offices or PO boxes that dont necessarily relate to a geographical address. There were also a few erroneous entries, that ended up in Europe, so these have been removed from the final version.

We managed to get through it in 2 days, mostly because we sent no more than 1 request per second to Google so we wouldn't get blocked.

Attached is a zip with the kml file for Google Earth (this is REALLY cool) and a csv file with the data in.

Comments (20) | Print | Send | Download | del.icio.us | Digg It! | Linking Blogs | 4883 Views
Comments
[Add Comment]
Mitch's Gravatar Nice work with this data!

I had a lot of trouble finding a mapping between Australian postcodes and
geographic co-ordinates. Cheers
# Posted By Mitch | 20/04/07 09:42
Andrew's Gravatar Nice work guys. I was just about to start coding up exactly what you did. Certainly appreciate not having to wait 2 days for Google to do its magic!
# Posted By Andrew | 02/05/07 02:16
Neemie's Gravatar This is fantastic, saves me a _lot_ of time/effort!
# Posted By Neemie | 10/05/07 20:49
WilieWanker's Gravatar Thank you very much. Also needed similar data, and am also grateful to have saved the time and effort.
# Posted By WilieWanker | 11/05/07 20:32
John Sheppard's Gravatar Thanks guys, this is really cool, this has solved our university assignment delema. Good karma for you.
# Posted By John Sheppard | 23/05/07 23:34
Luke's Gravatar Awesome! Just the thing I was looking for. Are you guys sharing this data with Auspost, or are they not interested?
# Posted By Luke | 04/06/07 11:33
rd's Gravatar It's good work, but there are errors.

For example, Alice Springs is located at Darwin in the Data, & Elliot, NT is located at Alice Springs in the Data.

The locations for the xxx0 & xxx1 postcode vary by a lot (eg look at lat/long Sydney postcodes 2000 & 2001)
# Posted By rd | 13/09/07 11:50
Duncan's Gravatar I appreciate that its not 100% correct, this was all done by feeding in "suburb, state, postcode" to the google geocode service.

Simply, if a result was found we used it. I certainly haven't had the time to go through it all and ensure the coordinates are accurate.
# Posted By Duncan | 14/09/07 09:02
pete's Gravatar Thanks so much for this!
If people find inaccuracies, rather than just stating the fact, they could possibly update a correction hint hint to whoever whinged about this!
# Posted By pete | 19/09/07 09:36
devon carter's Gravatar Were the eliminated in the 9021 plus range. According to my Queensland info sheet the codes go up to 9999 ?
# Posted By devon carter | 26/09/07 04:51
Duncan's Gravatar @devon - It would seem that this set of data has only codes up to 9726/8/9 - Gold Coast, 9464 Northgate, 9023 Brisbane and down. I wonder if your information is correct but we are missing some data? Its about time I did an update, so I want to get the latest auspost and run this all again.
# Posted By Duncan | 27/09/07 08:39
Steven's Gravatar Nice work. Well done.
I have used it to visualise groups of postcodes.
# Posted By Steven | 15/06/08 06:36
Simon's Gravatar You just saved me 2 days of my life.
Thank you!!
# Posted By Simon | 11/07/08 16:25
Paceman's Gravatar Thank you so much for passing on this information. It's probably the most useful thing I've ever seen or downloaded from the web. Again, a real lifesaver for me and I appreciate it.
# Posted By Paceman | 29/07/08 16:43
Chris's Gravatar Thanks Guys,

Was thinking about writing a script to do the same thing, but was extremely happy to find that someone already had the same idea.

Much appreciated.

Chris
# Posted By Chris | 14/08/08 14:07
Chris's Gravatar Awesome work guys. I just spent a week doing exactly this and just found your work. Bugger!
# Posted By Chris | 26/08/08 18:21
SuperGreenMe's Gravatar Thanks guys!!

Great effort, there is another company selling it for $220, so this is a great service.

Is there any chance that you could update the info - run the script again?

Thanks,
Dave
# Posted By SuperGreenMe | 10/03/09 17:46
Juan Carlos's Gravatar Excellent work, saves me time and sweat! Thanks!
# Posted By Juan Carlos | 12/03/09 16:35
Sean's Gravatar Genius ! Exactly what I was after, thankyou !
# Posted By Sean | 13/03/09 18:04
wow gold's Gravatar Thanks guys, this is really cool, this has solved our university assignment delema. Good karma for you.
# Posted By wow gold | 25/06/09 16:34
[Add Comment]
BlogCFC was created by Raymond Camden. This blog is running version 5.9.001.