Postcodes in Australia
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Postcodes in Australia are used to more efficiently sort and route
mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...
in the Australian postal system. Postcodes in Australia have four digits and are placed at the end of the Australian address, before the country. Postcodes were introduced in Australia in 1967 by the
Postmaster-General's Department The Postmaster-General's Department (PMG) was a department of the Australian federal government, established at Federation in 1901, whose responsibilities included the provision of postal and telegraphic services throughout Australia. It was ...
and are now managed by
Australia Post Australia Post, formally the Australian Postal Corporation and also known as AusPost, is an Australian Government-State-owned enterprise, owned corporation that provides postal services throughout Australia. Australia Post's head office is loca ...
, Australia's national postal service. Postcodes are published in booklets available from
post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...
s or online from the Australia Post website. Australian envelopes and postcards often have four boxes printed in orange at the bottom right for the postcode. These are used to assist with the automated sorting of mail that has been addressed by hand for Australian delivery.


History

Postcodes were introduced in Australia in 1967 by the
Postmaster-General's Department The Postmaster-General's Department (PMG) was a department of the Australian federal government, established at Federation in 1901, whose responsibilities included the provision of postal and telegraphic services throughout Australia. It was ...
(PMG) to replace earlier postal sorting systems, such as Melbourne's letter and number codes (e.g., ''N3'', ''E5'') and a similar system then used in rural and regional
New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...
. The introduction of the postcodes coincided with the introduction of a large-scale mechanical mail sorting system in Australia, starting with the Sydney GPO. The initial digit of each postcode was copied directly from the previously-existing numerical prefixes of Australian radio call signs, which were based on state/territory borders. Over time, however, the initial digits of postcodes have deviated from the radio system, for example, the 8000 series refers to special addresses in Victoria. It is sometimes stated, incorrectly, that the initial digits of the postcodes corresponded to the geographical boundaries of the official Australian Military Districts, that existed in 1911–1997. In fact, only the boundaries of the initial 2- and initial 3– postcodes were ever similar to the former
2nd A second is the base unit of time in the International System of Units (SI). Second, Seconds, The Second, or (The) 2nd may also refer to: Mathematics * 2 (number), as an ordinal (also written as ''2nd'' or ''2d'') * Minute and second of arc, ...
and former 3rd Military Districts, respectively. By 1968, 75% of mail was using postcodes, and in the same year post office preferred-size envelopes were introduced, which came to be referred to as "standard envelopes". Postcode squares were introduced in June 1990 to enable Australia Post to use
optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronics, electronic or machine, mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo ...
(OCR) software in its mail sorting machines to automatically and more quickly sort mail by postcodes.


Format

Australian postcodes consist of four digits, and are written after the name of the city, suburb, or town, and the state or territory:
Recipient Name 100 Citizen Road BLACKTOWN NSW 2148
When writing an address by hand, and a row of four boxes is pre-printed on the lower right-hand corner of an envelope, the postcode may be written in the boxes instead. When posting to an organisation, business names can be written instead of a recipient name. If an article is intended for a specific identity within an organisation, their identity can be prepended on the line above the business name, with c/- prepended to the business name. If addressing a letter from outside Australia, the postcode is recorded before 'Australia', which is placed on a fourth line.


Geography

Australian postcodes are sorting information. They are often linked with one area; e.g. 6160 belongs only to
Fremantle, Western Australia Fremantle () () is a port city in Western Australia located at the mouth of the Swan River (Western Australia), Swan River in the metropolitan area of Perth, the state capital. Fremantle Harbour serves as the port of Perth. The Western Australi ...
. Due to postcode rationalisation, they can be quite complex, especially in country areas; e.g. 2570 belongs to twenty-two towns and suburbs around Camden, New South Wales. The south-western Victoria 3221 postcode of the
Geelong Geelong ( ) (Wathawurrung language, Wathawurrung: ''Djilang''/''Djalang'') is a port city in Victoria, Australia, located at the eastern end of Corio Bay (the smaller western portion of Port Phillip Bay) and the left bank of Barwon River (Victo ...
Mail Centre also includes twenty places around Geelong with very few people. This means that mail for these places is not fully sorted until it gets to Geelong. Some postcodes cover large populations (e.g., postcode 4350 serving some 100,000 people in
Toowoomba Toowoomba ( ), nicknamed 'The Garden City' and 'T-Bar', is a city on the border of South East Queensland and Darling Downs regions of Queensland, Australia. It is located west of Queensland's capital, Brisbane. The urban population of Toowoom ...
and the surrounding area), while other postcodes have much smaller populations, even in urban areas. Australian postcodes range from 0200 for the
Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...
(now 2601) to 9944 for Cannonvale, Queensland. Some towns and suburbs have two postcodes — one for street deliveries and another for
post office box A post office box (commonly abbreviated as P.O. box, or also known as a postal box) is a uniquely addressable lockable box located on the premises of a post office. In some regions, particularly in Africa, there is no door-to-door delivery ...
es. For example, a street address in the Sydney suburb of
Parramatta Parramatta (; ) is a suburb (Australia), suburb and major commercial centre in Greater Western Sydney. Parramatta is located approximately west of the Sydney central business district, Sydney CBD, on the banks of the Parramatta River. It is co ...
would be written like this: :Mr John Smith :99 George Street :PARRAMATTA NSW 2150 But mail sent to a PO Box in Parramatta would be addressed: :Mr John Smith :PO Box 99 :PARRAMATTA NSW 2124 Many large businesses, government departments and other institutions receiving high volumes of mail had their own postcode as a ''Large Volume Receiver'' (LVR), e.g. the
Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital The Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital (RBWH) is a tertiary public hospital located in Herston, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeaste ...
has the postcode 4029, the
Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...
had the postcode 0200. More postcode ranges were made available for LVRs in the 1990s. Australia Post has been progressively discontinuing the LVR programme since 2006.


Places without postcodes

Some places in Australia do not have postcodes. These are typically remote areas with little or no population.


Allocation


Australian states and territories

The first one or two numerals usually show the state or territory that the postcode belongs to Sometimes near the state and territory borders, Australia Post finds it easier to send mail through a nearby post office that is across the border: Some of the postcodes above may cover two or more states. For example, postcode 2620 covers both a locality in NSW (''Gundaroo'') as well as a locality in the ACT (''Hume''), and postcode 0872 covers a number of localities across WA, SA and NT. Three locations (Mingoola, Mungindi and Texas) straddle the NSW-Queensland border (so same town name and postcode on both sides).
Jervis Bay Territory The Jervis Bay Territory (; "JBT") is an internal states and territories of Australia, territory of Australia. It was established in 1915 by the transfer of jurisdiction from the state of New South Wales to the federal Commonwealth of Australia ...
is located on the coast of NSW. It is just south of the towns of Vincentia and Huskisson, with which it shares a postcode. Mail to the Jervis Bay Territory is addressed to the ACT. The numerals used to show the state on each radio callsign in Australia are the same numeral as the first numeral for postcodes in that state, e.g. ''2xx'' in New South Wales, ''3xx'' in Victoria, etc. Radio callsigns pre-date postcodes in Australia by more than forty years.


External territories

Australia's external territories are also included in Australia Post's postcode system. While these territories do not belong to any state, they are addressed as such for mail sorting: Three scientific bases in Antarctica operated by the
Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions The Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE ) is the historical name for the Australia: Antarctic Program#Australian Antarctic program, Australian Antarctic Program (AAP) administered for Australia by the Australian Antarctic D ...
share a postcode with the isolated sub-Antarctic island of
Macquarie Island Macquarie Island is a subantarctic island in the south-western Pacific Ocean, about halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica. It has been governed as a part of Tasmania, Australia, since 1880. It became a Protected areas of Tasmania, Tasmania ...
(part of Tasmania): There is also a "special" postcode for routing mail sent to
Santa Claus Santa Claus (also known as Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle or Santa) is a legendary figure originating in Western Christian culture who is said to bring gifts during the late evening and overnight hours on Chris ...
:


State and territory capital cities

Each state's capital city ends with three zeroes, while territorial capital cities end with two zeroes. Capital city postcodes were the lowest postcodes in their state or territory range, before new ranges for LVRs and PO Boxes were made available. The last numeral can usually be changed from "0" to "1" to get the postcode for
General Post Office The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Established in England in the 17th century, the GPO was a state monopoly covering the dispatch of items from a specific ...
boxes in any capital city (though Perth now uses a different range of postcodes for its GPO Boxes):


Allocation within states

While the first numeral of a postcode usually shows the state or territory, the second numeral usually shows a region within the state. However, postcodes with the same second numeral are not always next to each other. As an example, postcodes in the range 2200–2299 are split between the southern suburbs of Sydney and the Central Coast, Lake Macquarie and
Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England, United Kingdom *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England, United Kingdom *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area ...
regions of New South Wales. Postcodes with a second numeral of "0" or "1" are almost always located within the metropolitan area of the state's capital city. Postcodes with higher second numerals are usually located in rural and regional areas. Common exceptions are where towns were rural when postcodes were first introduced in 1967, but have since been suburbanised and incorporated into metropolitan areas, e.g.
Penrith, New South Wales Penrith is a city in New South Wales, Australia, located in Greater Western Sydney, 55 kilometres (31 mi) west of the Sydney central business district on the banks of the Nepean River, on the outskirts of the Cumberland Plain. Its elevati ...
has the postcode 2750 and Petrie, Queensland has the postcode 4502. Within each region with the same second numeral, postcodes are usually allocated in ascending order the further one travels from the state's capital city along major highways and railways. For instance, heading north on the North Coast railway in New South Wales away from Sydney:


Major towns and cities

Major towns and cities tend to have "0" as the last numeral or last two numerals, e.g.
Rockhampton, Queensland Rockhampton is a city in the Rockhampton Region of Central Queensland, Australia. In the , the population of Rockhampton was 79,293. A common nickname for Rockhampton is "Rocky", and the demonym of Rockhampton is Rockhamptonite. The Scottish- ...
has the postcode 4700 and
Ballarat, Victoria Ballarat ( ) () is a city in the Central Highlands (Victoria), Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia. At the 2021 Australian census, 2021 census, Ballarat had a population of 111,973, making it the third-largest urban inland city in Australi ...
has the postcode 3350. There are exceptions; the major town of
Ipswich, Queensland Ipswich () is an urban centre within the City of Ipswich in South East Queensland, Australia. Situated on the Bremer River (Queensland), Bremer River, it is approximately 40 km (25 mi) west of the Brisbane central business district. Ipswich is ...
has the postcode 4305, while Goodna, a relatively small suburb of Ipswich, is allocated 4300.


Postcode squares

Australia Post prefers envelopes sold in Australia to have four boxes in the bottom right corner of the front of the envelope. Entering the postcode in these boxes or squares, which Australia Post calls ''postcode squares'', enables Australia Post to use
optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronics, electronic or machine, mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo ...
software in its mail sorting machines to automatically and more quickly sort mail into postcodes, which also embeds routing information. Postcode squares were introduced in June 1990. Australia Post says that postcode squares should not be used for machine-addressed mail, or mail going overseas.


Other uses

Many other organisations now use postcodes.
Insurance Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to protect ...
companies often use postcodes when working out the cost of car and house insurance.
Transport for NSW Transport for NSW (TfNSW) is a Government of New South Wales, New South Wales Government transport services and roads List of New South Wales government agencies, agency established on 1 November 2011. The agency is a different entity to the NSW ...
uses postcodes to give specific numbers for each bus stop in
Greater Sydney Greater Sydney is the most populous metropolitan area in Australia and Oceania. Located in the state of New South Wales, it encompasses the City of Sydney (the state capital), its neighbouring local government areas and surrounding regions. I ...
. The stop number is five to seven numbers: the first four are the postcode, and the others show the bus stop (sometimes written with a space in between, e.g. "2000 108"). Many companies that produce metropolitan street maps also list the postcodes for each suburb, both in indexes and on the maps themselves. Spatial representation of postcodes is also very popular in defining sales and franchise territories. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Taxation Office and many other Federal and State government organisations publish a variety of statistics by postcode which extends the use Australia Post four digit code to many business and social planning related activities. There is an inherent problem with spatial representation of postcodes since areas referenced to a specific postal code tend to change over time, as new postcodes are added or existing ones are split by Australia Post for operational purposes. Some mail generating software can automatically sort outward mail by postcode before it is generated. This pre-sort of mail into postcode order eliminates the need for it to be sorted manually or using mail sorting machines.


Mechanised sorting

To improve mechanised sorting, each address now has a sorting number which is printed on the letter as an orange-coloured
barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, Machine-readable data, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly ref ...
. This number might be 12 digits long. This system enables the post office to place items in delivery order. Companies can also use Rapid Addressing Tool (RATS) to print Customer Addressed Barcodes, which are printed above the address. Every Delivery Point in Australia (DPID) has its own number. Barcode sorter machines sort and sequence letters up to C5 size. Flat multi-level OCR reads, imprints and sorts C5 to A3 sized articles.


See also

*
Postal codes in Canada A Canadian postal code () is a six-character string that forms part of a postal address in Canada. Like British, Irish, Dutch, and Argentinian postcodes, Canada's postal codes are alphanumeric. They are in the format ''A1A 1A1'', where ' ...
*
Postcodes in the United Kingdom Postal codes used in the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown dependencies are known as postcodes (originally, postal codes). They are alphanumeric (the UK is one of only 11 countries or territories to use alphanumeric codes o ...
*
Postcodes in New Zealand Postcodes in New Zealand consist of four digits, the first two of which specify the area, the third the type of delivery (street, PO Box, Private Bag, or Rural delivery), and the last the specific lobby, RD (rural delivery) number, or suburb. ...
* ZIP code in USA


References


External links


Postcodes Australia
- Australia Post's postcode search
Australian Bureau of Statistics data related to postcodes



Public domain database (XLS,CSV,XML,JSON) of Australia postcodes and geographical data
{{DEFAULTSORT:Postcodes In Australia
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
Postal history of Australia