National Base Map: Greyscale Topographic Maps for Australia

Australia's seamless greyscale topographic mapping service covers the mainland and external territories including Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island, Norfolk Island, and Lord Howe Island. The service is produced for the National Map project, combining Geoscience Australia data at smaller scales with OpenStreetMap data at larger scales. It was last updated on 2026-05-05.

Use Cases

• Create basemaps for thematic overlays based on seamless greyscale mapping.
• Analyze topographic features across Australia based on the multi-scale data.
• Integrate national-scale mapping into web applications based on the MapServer service.
• Compare landform representation based on the combined Geoscience Australia and OpenStreetMap sources.

Strengths

• Seamless coverage for the whole of Australia, including external territories.
• Combines authoritative Geoscience Australia data with community-sourced OpenStreetMap data.
• Last updated on 2026-05-05, indicating recent maintenance.

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.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Combined Geoscience Australia and OpenStreetMap data.

Freshness

2026-05-05

Geography

Australia and external territories (Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island, Norfolk Island, Lord Howe Island)