Australian Topographic Map Series at 1:250,000 Scale

AUSTopo is a digital topographic map series covering all of Australia at a scale of 1:250,000, comprising 516 standard map sheets. The series depicts natural and constructed features including road and rail infrastructure, vegetation, hydrography, and 50-meter contours. It is produced by Geoscience Australia with coordinates in GDA94/GDA2020 datums and UTM projection.

Use Cases

• Extract road and rail infrastructure features for national transportation network analysis.
• Analyze hydrography and 50-meter contour intervals for watershed and terrain modeling.
• Identify vegetation coverage and administrative boundaries for regional land-use planning.
• Combine map sheets with non-standard areas for coastal and marine spatial studies.

Strengths

• Covers the entire continent of Australia with 516 map sheets.
• Provides topographic data at the largest scale (1:250,000) published for the whole country.
• Includes multiple coordinate datums (GDA94, GDA2020, AHD) and UTM projection.

Limitations

• Data is delivered as PDF files, requiring feature extraction for geospatial analysis.
• Map sheets may contain information from surrounding sheets, potentially complicating precise boundary analysis.
• Approximately 50 special maps cover non-standard areas, which may require additional handling for systematic coverage.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Published digital topographic map series.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated March 2026.

Geography

Australia