Australian National Topographic Base Map Without Labels

A seamless topographic color map covering all of Australia and its external territories, sourced from Geoscience Australia, Australian Antarctic Division, and OpenStreetMap. The service includes data from multiple scales, with mainland Australia beyond 1:100,000 scale derived from GEODATA TOPO 250K and more detailed scales from OpenStreetMap. The topographic information was checked in 2008 using satellite imagery and supplemented in 2009, with limited field checking.

Use Cases

• Create custom thematic maps based on the underlying topographic features like hydrography and relief.
• Perform spatial analysis for environmental or land-use planning based on the aggregated vegetation layer from ACLUMP.
• Use as a base layer for computer vision tasks like feature detection, given the detailed graphic representations of surface features.
• Integrate with other geospatial datasets for the Australian region, leveraging the consistent coverage of mainland and island territories.

Strengths

• Covers the entire Australian continent, including outer islands like Norfolk and external territories like the Australian Antarctic Territory.
• Integrates data from multiple authoritative sources including Geoscience Australia, OpenStreetMap, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
• Includes specific high-resolution mapping datasets for Christmas Island (1:30,000 scale) and Cocos (Keeling) Islands (1:25,000 scale).
• The SRTM DEM data was processed for stripe removal, void filling, and vegetation offset removal, as described in a user guide.

Limitations

• The description notes limited field checking was undertaken, so some topographic information may not be accurate.
• The primary topographic data was checked in 2008 and supplemented in 2009, which may affect its currency for some applications.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, Australian Antarctic Division, OpenStreetMap, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Natural Earth.

Collection Method

Aggregated from multiple topographic mapping datasets and satellite imagery (SRTM).

Time Range

Topographic data checked in 2008-2009; SRTM data acquired February 2000.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-04 06:54:16.153293; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia, including mainland, outer islands (Norfolk, Lord Howe, Macquarie), external territories (Cocos (Keeling), Christmas, Heard and McDonald Islands), and the Australian Antarctic Territory.