Australian Topographic Map Series at 1:250,000 Scale

516 digital maps provide complete coverage of Australia at a scale where 1 centimeter represents 2.5 kilometers on the ground. Geoscience Australia produced this series, which is the largest-scale topographic map set covering the entire continent. Each standard map sheet covers an area of approximately 1.5 degrees longitude by 1 degree latitude.

Use Cases

• Extract road and rail infrastructure features for transportation network analysis.
• Analyze hydrography and contour lines with a 50m interval for watershed modeling and terrain analysis.
• Identify vegetation cover and land use patterns for ecological studies.
• Georeference administrative boundaries and localities for demographic or service planning.
• Combine map sheets using their standard geographic extents for creating seamless national datasets.

Strengths

• Complete coverage of the Australian continent through 516 individual map sheets.
• Standardized scale of 1:250,000, providing consistent detail across the series.
• Includes multiple coordinate reference systems (GDA94, GDA2020, AHD) and UTM projection.

Limitations

• Data is provided in PDF format, which requires conversion for direct use in most GIS software.
• The specific date of data collection or currency of features within each map is not provided.
• Approximately 50 maps in the series cover non-standard areas, complicating automated tiling.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Published digital topographic mapping series.

Freshness

Last platform update recorded on 2026-03-26.

Geography

Australia