Gazetteer of Australia: Over 300,000 Authorized Place Names

The Gazetteer of Australia is the authoritative source for approved place names covering the Australian mainland, its 3-mile marine limit, and external territories, excluding the Antarctic Territory. It contains over 300,000 place names from the 2010 release. The gazetteer is compiled by Geoscience Australia's Geospatial and Earth Monitoring Division on behalf of the Committee for Geographical Names in Australasia.

Use Cases

• Geocoding and address validation based on authoritative place name spelling and location.
• Map and cartographic production based on standardized geographical names.
• Spatial data integration and analysis based on the gazetteer's coverage of land and offshore areas.
• Natural language processing for location entity recognition based on a comprehensive list of Australian place names.

Strengths

• Over 300,000 place names in the 2010 release.
• Authoritative data source compiled by Geoscience Australia on behalf of a national committee.
• Covers the Australian mainland, its 3-mile marine limit, and external territories.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is from a 2010 release; freshness should be verified against more recent sources.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, compiled on behalf of the Committee for Geographical Names in Australasia (CGNA).

Collection Method

Data is sourced from State and Territory jurisdictions (ACT, NSW, NT, QLD, SA, TAS, VIC, WA) and Australian Government agencies.

Time Range

2010 release.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-23 04:34:23.870214; freshness should be verified

Geography

Australian mainland (extending to the 3-mile marine limit) and external territories, except the Australian Antarctic Territory.